BUSINESS BEFORE QUESTIONS

Canterbury City Council Bill  (By Order)

Third Reading opposed and deferred until Thursday 5 November (Standing Order No. 20).

Nottingham City Council Bill  (By Order)

Third Reading opposed and deferred until Thursday 5 November (Standing Order No. 20).

Bournemouth Borough Council Bill [ Lords]   (By Order)

Consideration of Bill, as amended, opposed and deferred until Thursday 5 November (Standing Order No. 20).

Manchester City Council Bill [ Lords]  (By Order)

Consideration of Bill, as amended, opposed and deferred until Thursday 5 November (Standing Order No. 20).

City of Westminster Bill [ Lords]

Motion made,
	That so much of the Lords message [12 October] as relates to the City of Westminster Bill [ Lords] be now considered.- ( The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.)

Hon. Members: Object.
	 To be considered on Thursday 5 November.

Bournemouth Borough Council Bill [ Lords]

Motion made,
	That the promoters of the Bournemouth Borough Council Bill which was originally introduced in the House of Lords in the Session 2006-07 on 22 January 2007, should have leave to suspend any further proceedings on the Bill in order to proceed with it, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament according to the provisions of Private Business Standing Order 188A (Suspension of bills).-( The  Second Deputy  Chairman of Ways and Means.)

Hon. Members: Object.
	 To be considered on Thursday 5 November.

Manchester City Council Bill [ Lords]

Motion made,
	That the promoters of the Manchester City Council Bill which was originally introduced in the House of Lords in the Session 2006-07 on 22 January 2007, should have leave to suspend any further proceedings on the Bill in order to proceed with it, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament according to the provisions of Private Business Standing Order 188A (Suspension of bills).-( The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.)

Hon. Members: Object.
	 To be considered on Thursday 5 November.

Canterbury City Council Bill

Motion made,
	That the promoters of the Canterbury City Council Bill which was originally introduced in this House in the previous Session on 22 January 2008, should have leave to suspend any further proceedings on the Bill in order to proceed with it, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament according to the provisions of Private Business Standing Order 188A (Suspension of bills).-( The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.)

Hon. Members: Object.
	 To be considered on Thursday 5 November.

Leeds City Council Bill

Motion made,
	That the promoters of the Leeds City Council Bill which was originally introduced in this House in the previous Session on 22 January 2008, should have leave to suspend any further proceedings on the Bill in order to proceed with it, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament according to the provisions of Private Business Standing Order 188A (Suspension of bills).-( The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.)

Hon. Members: Object.
	 To be considered on Thursday 5 November.

Nottingham City Council Bill

Motion made,
	That the promoters of the Nottingham City Council Bill which was originally introduced in this House in the previous Session on 22 January 2008, should have leave to suspend any further proceedings on the Bill in order to proceed with it, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament according to the provisions of Private Business Standing Order 188A (Suspension of bills).-( The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.)

Hon. Members: Object.
	 To be considered on Thursday 5 November.

Reading Borough Council Bill

Motion made,
	That the promoters of the Reading Borough Council Bill which was originally introduced in this House in the previous Session on 22 January 2008, should have leave to suspend any further proceedings on the Bill in order to proceed with it, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament according to the provisions of Private Business Standing Order 188A (Suspension of bills).-( The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.)

Hon. Members: Object.
	 To be considered on Thursday 5 November.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS

The Secretary of State was asked-

Natural Environment

Madeleine Moon: What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department's policies to protect the natural environment; and if he will make a statement.

Hilary Benn: We have seen improvements in water quality, more species have been protected, pollution levels are decreasing, and 89 per cent. of our sites of special scientific interest are in a favourable or recovering condition. However, we all need to do more to protect our natural environment, and securing a good deal at Copenhagen would be a very important step forward.

Madeleine Moon: My right hon. Friend will be aware that last Monday night I hosted the fourth annual bat and moth evening in the House. A large number of Members attended to see how those vital species, which are interdependent, are declining. In this year when we are celebrating 150 years since the writing of "On the Origin of Species", and with next year being the international year of biodiversity, what is he going to do to ensure that in another 150 years, our descendants will not be attending museums and looking at further bat and moth species that we have lost?

Hilary Benn: I congratulate my hon. Friend on hosting the event, and I am sorry that I was not able to join her for it. The single most important thing that we can do is understand and appreciate more the value of biodiversity, including what it does for us, because it is fundamental to human existence and we have taken it for granted for far too long. It sustains our economy, our clean water and air and the production of our food. We need next year to get a new target internationally agreed that we can measure and make progress on.

Nicholas Soames: Does the Secretary of State agree that the scourge of ragwort is a shame to this country? His Department has issued a code, which appears to be widely ignored. Will he therefore take steps to see to it that this infection is removed from our countryside?

Hilary Benn: I share the hon. Gentleman's concern, and we are trying to find the most effective way to deal with such invasive species. I am happy to write to him to set out the steps that we are seeking to take.

Barry Sheerman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if we are to protect the natural environment, we have to get people to visit it? Has he seen the Natural England survey showing that children's access to green space and the natural environment has halved in a generation. What are the Government going to do about that?

Hilary Benn: I have seen that report, and I share my hon. Friend's desire that more people should have the chance to get out there. The national parks provide a wonderful opportunity for that, and of course the coastal access provisions of the Marine and Coastal Access Bill, which received its Third Reading earlier this week, will provide further opportunities for young people and others to enjoy the beauty of our countryside.

Richard Benyon: It is clear that the Government will break their promise to halt biodiversity loss by 2010. In an admission of failure to the Environmental Audit Committee, they said that it was "never realistically achievable". Now the Secretary of State talks of more targets for some date way in the future. Is it not the truth that there remains a marked lack of will in the Government to reverse biodiversity loss?

Hilary Benn: I profoundly disagree with that last statement. The Government are very committed. If the hon. Gentleman considers, for example, bird numbers, we have managed in this country to stop the decline that happened between the 1970s and the 1990s. The number of sea birds is up, we have offered protection to Lyme bay to safeguard the pink sea fan and there are otters in every single English county for the first time in 40 years. However, we need to do more, and the point about having a target is that it gives one something to aim for.

Floods (Pitt Report)

Philip Davies: What progress has been made in implementing the recommendations of the final Pitt report on the 2007 floods.

Huw Irranca-Davies: The Government published their response to the Pitt review last December. It set out what we had already achieved and what we needed to do to implement the remaining recommendations.
	We published the first progress report in June 2009, and it showed that further good progress had been made across the board. The next progress report will be published in December.

Philip Davies: Does the Minister agree that one of the best ways to stop houses being flooded is to stop building them on floodplains? If he agrees, why have the Government presided over building so many houses on so many floodplains?

Huw Irranca-Davies: Ultimately, the hon. Gentleman knows about the progress on the review of planning policy guidance note 25 and that approximately 98 per cent. of developments follow the Environment Agency's recommendations. I am slightly disappointed that he has not remarked on the doubling of investment under the Government for flood defences since 1997.

Eric Martlew: The Pitt inquiry states that the public utilities should be protected-the fresh water, electricity and waste water plants. That was especially a problem when Carlisle flooded. Has satisfactory progress been made on that?

Huw Irranca-Davies: That is an important point and I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that we set up a new Cabinet Office team to ensure that critical national infrastructure-for example, power stations-is properly protected from flooding. If we are lucky in what may be in the Queen's Speech-we can never second-guess it-there is an imperative under the Labour Government to get on and deliver the legislation that will give further protection to homes, businesses and infrastructure.

Anne McIntosh: This Cabinet Office team was meant to meet last year and report by the spring on a national audit of all critical infrastructure at risk. Why has it failed to do that?

Huw Irranca-Davies: I am pleased to report that that work is well under way. Every time we stand at the Dispatch Box, Conservative Front Benchers harry the Government to do more. They simply ignore what has been done-the £9.7 million awarded to 77 local authorities with the highest risk and potential for surface water flooding; the £5 million currently open for bids to deal with well-known local flooding problems; the £1 million for training, data and other tools for local authorities; and our work on flood forecasting. Sometimes it would pay to stand up and recognise the work that is being done.

Adrian Bailey: As a native of Gloucestershire, I saw at first hand the devastation caused by flooding in the Tewkesbury, Gloucester and Cheltenham area. I hope that the Minister agrees that measures to ensure that that never happens again should be introduced as a matter of urgency. What prospects are there of a suitable Bill in the Queen's Speech? What assessment has my hon. Friend made of securing all-party support to get it through as quickly as possible?

Huw Irranca-Davies: I assure my hon. Friend that we are very keen to get on. I welcome the fact that at a conference run by Marketforce and the Institute of Economic Affairs as recently as 15 October, my Opposition Front-Bench colleague said that
	"we are concerned that a Bill may be dropped from this final session altogether. The Government will have serious questions to answer if, two years after the Pitt report, there is not only no legislation for the water industry but also nothing to address the urgent problem of flooding."
	I can tell my hon. Friend that, through consultation on the draft Bill and through our work, we are keen to get on with it. We cannot presuppose the contents of the Queen's Speech, but I hope that, on the basis of what I have said, we will have full, solid and cross-party support to deliver the protection that we need for homes and businesses.

David Heath: May I ask about the property-level flood protection grant scheme? If householders take measures at their own risk in advance of the survey, which is part of that procedure, is it the case that they cannot be paid retrospectively for the work done? That seems unfair. It is no good waiting until it rains before taking the measures needed to protect one's home.

Huw Irranca-Davies: My understanding is that that is a matter for local authorities, many of which, as the hon. Gentleman knows, have applied and bid for the funding. However, I am more than happy to write to him with details to clarify the point that he has raised. It is important, and when people take responsible approaches to their properties' resilience, that needs to be recognised, but I will write to him.

Local Food Chains

David Drew: What assistance his Department provides to local food chains.

Jim Fitzpatrick: We provide a range of assistance to local food chains, including helping regional and local food producers to overcome various barriers to market. We have funded meet-the-buyer events for both retailers and the food service sector. We also support farmers markets and farm shops, and encourage the use of food hubs and shared distribution facilities.

David Drew: I thank the Minister for that answer. It is common for people to mouth support for local food chains, but in the past year, two box schemes that I belonged to finished prematurely, which is very disappointing. There is clearly a problem in this day and age. I wonder whether the Government ought to do more, and certainly whether they ought to encourage local authorities to do more.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I am sure that we would want to do more. Only last week I had a useful meeting with representatives from the National Farmers Retail and Markets Association to discuss a range of issues relating to farmers and markets and farm shops. I commend my hon. Friend on the excellent local food initiatives in his constituency. Only last week, officials from the food policy unit in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs visited Gloucestershire to find out more about a wide range of food-oriented activities that are taking place in the county. I am sure that we will be able to use the information and disseminate it to local authorities to improve the situation even further.

Desmond Swayne: Did the Minister hear the piece on "Farming Today" this morning on what is likely to happen to food prices over the next 20 years? I will not try your patience, Mr. Speaker, so may I just ask the Minister whether he will add his voice to mine in seeking a full day's debate on agriculture from the Leader of the House?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I remember fondly my first week as Minister of State with responsibility for farming, from 9 June, when I believe that we had two debates in the House on agriculture. We would welcome more debates on agriculture. I suggest the hon. Gentleman applies to your good offices, Mr. Speaker, for that very opportunity. We would be delighted to meet him across the Dispatch Box.

Albert Owen: As we celebrate British food week, may I tell the House that I recently visited the Anglesey oyster fair in my constituency, where I saw the very best of British food? One issue that local producers raised with me was the barrier to getting into local supermarkets. Is it not about time that we had a proper champion-an ombudsman-to redress the balance in favour of the British consumer and the British producer and away from the supermarket?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I think my hon. Friend has managed to merge three questions into one: the retail sector supporting local produce, barriers to local producers getting into supermarkets and the ombudsman. I can assure him that on the ombudsman, the Government are considering the Competition Commission's recommendations. I can also assure him that we are doing what we can to ensure that local producers can get into supermarkets.

Farmers (Suicides)

Jane Kennedy: What representations he has received on the number of suicides amongst farmers whose cattle herds are subject to bovine tuberculosis movement and testing restrictions; and if he will make a statement.

Hilary Benn: I have not received any particular representations about this, but earlier this year the Farming Crisis Network produced its sobering report on the impact of bovine TB on farming families. This showed, as we all know, that for those most seriously affected, the economic and particularly the human consequences of bovine TB are devastating. The TB eradication group for England has since met with the executive director of the FCN to discuss how TB-affected farm businesses could be better supported.

Jane Kennedy: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer. Will he consider the recommendations in the detail of the report, alongside the good work that the Department is doing on cattle movements and testing regimes? In particular, will he look at the impact on farmers whose herds are subject to testing every 60 days? That happens in some cases, and it is a devastating regime for the farm and the family.

Hilary Benn: I know that my right hon. Friend took a great deal of interest in the matter and I pay tribute to her work on it. The TB eradication group that we have now established is both looking at what can be done to help farmers to try to cope with the disease and getting on with doing effective things to try to tackle it. I have approved all the recommendations that the TB eradication group produced recently. The House will be aware that our TB eradication plan has now been approved by the European Union and funding has been given to us to help implement it.

Roger Williams: When does the Secretary of State expect the TB eradication group to report back with its final recommendations, and will those recommendations be acted on?

Hilary Benn: It is a matter for the TB eradication group to report as it sees fit. Its first report, as I just indicated, has been received, and I accepted all its recommendations. The fact that we are working in partnership now to try to deal with this devastating disease is a big step forward compared with where we were before.

Roger Williams: I thank the Secretary of State for that, but has he received any as yet unpublished reports that would help the TB eradication group develop better policies that would assist in reducing the levels of TB in cattle and in badgers? If there are any unpublished reports, can he make them available to the House?

Hilary Benn: I do not know to which unpublished reports the hon. Gentleman refers. If he is talking about scientific research, that has to go through a peer review process and be published. One of the things that the eradication group is doing is keeping a close eye on unfolding scientific information-that is part of its remit and it referred to that in the report that was recently put out.

James Paice: I wish to pursue the same line of questioning. Has the Secretary of State yet seen and read the report, which I am told is now available, by vets on the continued studies of the incidence of TB after proactive culling has ended in the trial areas? Will he publish it soon, and then we will all know that the incidence has continued to decline since the culling of badgers stopped?

Hilary Benn: The publication of that research information is a matter for the journals who publish these things, and it has to be in a form suitable for publication. As soon as it is publicly available, I will ensure that it is placed in the Library so that we may all see what it has to say.

Common Agricultural Policy

Michael Moore: What recent discussions his Department has had with the European Commission on reform of the common agricultural policy.

Jim Fitzpatrick: The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has ongoing discussions on reform of the common agricultural policy with the Commission both formally and informally, including at regular meetings of the Agriculture Council, the last of which I attended on 19 October. The next phase of negotiations will begin informally next year with the new Agriculture Commissioner.

Michael Moore: Previously the Secretary of State has acknowledged the difficulties facing hill farmers in my constituency and elsewhere in the UK, which have not been eased by the implementation of sheep identification tags. Those farmers are deeply alarmed by the DEFRA vision for the future of agriculture. In the context of the recent Calman commission recommendations that Scottish and other devolved Administrations should have a serious input into UK policy making, will he give a pledge that Scottish concerns will be heard before a final British position is taken on CAP reform?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I can certainly give that assurance. We would in no way move forward without consulting all the relevant authorities and organisations. We clearly have our own priorities and negotiating position, which will be mapped out in due course, and they would not ignore such an important sector as the hon. Gentleman mentions.

Paddy Tipping: Will the Minister continue to press for a switch in the CAP from a subsidy for production to measures that benefit the countryside, such as investment in jobs and industry, an enhanced environment and greater access? These are public goods and public money, and we ought to be pursuing them.

Jim Fitzpatrick: My hon. Friend makes an important point. We certainly wish to foster an internationally competitive industry without reliance on subsidy or protection. The Government believe that CAP expenditure under pillar two offers better value for money than pillar one because it rewards farmers for the delivery of public benefits, especially environmental outcomes, as he outlines.

Nick Herbert: The Commission's draft reformed CAP is reported to include a third pillar on climate change. Farming must play its part in reducing carbon emissions, but does the Minister agree that Lord Stern's call for people to give up eating meat was totally irresponsible and damaging to our livestock industry?

Jim Fitzpatrick: It is certainly my belief that that is not quite what Lord Stern said. He made a comment that was lifted out and exaggerated. We certainly believe in a balanced diet, and there are many ways in which emissions of greenhouse gases can be tackled. That is not the position of the Government or the Department, and we will negotiate with the Commission to ensure that its position is as close to ours as possible.

Nick Herbert: Lord Stern said-and I quote directly from his interview:
	"Meat is...wasteful... A vegetarian diet is better."
	Britain's livestock producers are listening carefully to the Government's answer. Does the Minister agree with those comments or not?

Jim Fitzpatrick: It is for individual citizens and consumers to decide what they eat, and we support that. We also support the British agricultural industry and our meat producers. Sir Nicholas Stern's comments must be looked at from the perspective of the whole piece that he wrote, not just one quote or sentence.

Bovine Tuberculosis

Ann Winterton: What recent steps his Department has taken to reduce the incidence of bovine tuberculosis.

Hilary Benn: Since November 2008, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has worked alongside the farming industry and veterinary profession as part of the bovine TB eradication group for England. On 8 October, the group published a progress report including a number of recommendations now being implemented. We are pursuing the future use of vaccination through vaccine research and development of a badger vaccine deployment project, alongside our current control measures.

Ann Winterton: Far too many good dairy cows have been put down in my constituency of Congleton in Cheshire and elsewhere. While I welcome the progress made by the bovine TB eradication group, will the Secretary of State accept that veterinary surgeons who are members of the British Veterinary Association and the British Cattle Veterinary Association believe that he should reassess his criteria for targeting and culling badgers in certain circumstances?

Hilary Benn: I am well aware that, as the hon. Lady points out, others take a view different from the judgment that I formed and reported to the House last year. For me, the overwhelming requirement has been to take action that will be effective in dealing with the disease. As I indicated earlier, I understand completely, having talked to many, many farmers, how devastating the disease is, but we have to do things that will work in the circumstances. I had to have regard to the scientific advice given to me on the basis of having tried culling.

Michael Jack: Has the Secretary of State come to a conclusion about what he will do when the injectable vaccine is trialled and diseased animals are found? Will they be euthanased?

Hilary Benn: As I have indicated to the right hon. Gentleman previously, there is no simple cage-side test that can be used- [Interruption.] With respect, no test is reliable enough to indicate whether a badger is infected with tuberculosis. However, as I also said to him previously, if someone is of the view that an animal is in such distress that it would be a kindness to put it down, the law provides for that. However, that person would have to be satisfied that the animal was in such a condition.

Light Pollution

Lembit �pik: What recent representations he has received on regulation of light pollution; and if he will make a statement.

Dan Norris: DEFRA has received two recent representations, one about current legislation to tackle light nuisance, the other about future proposals to address light pollution.

Lembit �pik: Despite responding positively to the Science and Technology Committee's 2003 report, the Minister's Department and the Department of Communities and Local Government have yet to provide a draft annexe to planning policy statement 23 to make local planning authorities take light pollution as seriously as other types of pollution. When will guidance be published so that all local authorities can ensure that light pollution is prevented or minimised?

Dan Norris: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. DEFRA is no longer involved in the light pollution aspect of the DCLG's PPS23. The DCLG is now the lead Department on that, and that work is on hold pending its decisions on planning policy reform. However, I am in regular contact with my ministerial colleagues in DCLG on issues such as rural housing, and will raise the matter with them when I next have the opportunity, which I anticipate being next week, and I will ensure that the annexe about which he is concerned is published as soon as possible.

Brian Jenkins: I recognise that the Minister might be the wrong person to ask, given that this matter is no longer his responsibility, but has any model or trial ever been produced with regard to highway or local authority lighting on which we can call?

Dan Norris: As I mentioned, we are not the lead Department on this matter. However, I shall take my hon. Friend's point away with me and ensure that it is raised with the respective Minister next week.

Peter Atkinson: When the Minister meets his colleagues in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, will he remind them of a report produced by the then Department of the Environment called Lighting in the Countryside: Towards Good Practice? That was published 12 years ago and highlighted the danger of poorly planned lighting schemes in rural communities and market towns. Since then, very little has happened. As an MP who represents a constituency that contains some of the darkest areas in England, the matter is hugely important to me and my constituents.

Dan Norris: I give an absolute assurance that I will do that.

David Chaytor: One of the difficulties is the close relationship between quality of street lighting and levels of crime, which the Conservative council in Bury recently discovered to its cost when it planned to switch off the street lights in the middle of the night. When my hon. Friend speaks to his colleagues in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, will he ask them to look at the experiment currently taking place in Toulouse in south-west France with motion-sensitive street lights? Might that not be a model for the United Kingdom to follow?

Dan Norris: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that safety has to be taken seriously when considering switching off any lighting. However, that does not mean that lights should not be switched off in some situations. I am interested in the Toulouse experience, and I am sure that technology will provide the answer to those challenges in the future.

Robert Key: When the Select Committee on Science and Technology, of which I was a member, recommended in 2003 that light pollution be covered by statutory provisions in legislation, the Government agreed. However, local authorities, which regard light pollution as seriously as water or air pollution, can do nothing until the Government, through whichever Department, produce their planning policy statement. When will that happen?

Dan Norris: I hope that it happens soon; indeed, that is my understanding. However, I say to the hon. Gentleman strongly that the issue is about safety as well as saving the environment, and there is no easy answer to that. Councils that have considered the issue seriously have often pulled out. I hope that he will recognise that there are many shades of grey in this complex issue. We need to get it right and allow local authorities to do the same.

International Whaling Commission

Jim Cunningham: What his most recent assessment is of progress made by the small working group on the future of the International Whaling Commission.

Huw Irranca-Davies: At the IWC's 2009 annual meeting, which I attended, it was agreed that the small working group would continue work on the future of the IWC for another year. The support group, of which the UK is not a member, appointed to assist the small working group was unable to complete discussions on possible reform packages in October, but we hope to complete discussions before the small working group in March next year.

Jim Cunningham: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Has he had any discussions with the new Japanese Government regarding the Japanese attitude towards whales?

Huw Irranca-Davies: On 20 October, British officials met the Japanese Government and expressed continued concern about Japanese dolphin hunts, among other things. I wrote personally to the Japanese Fisheries Minister last week on a range of issues, including whaling, and expressed the British public's concern about the hunting of dolphins, urging Japan to prohibit the killing and capture of dolphins and other small cetaceans. We also welcome the reports that Taiji in Japan, which is at the centre of The Cove-the file and the film-is trialling a no-kill bottlenose dolphin policy.

UK Fishing Industry

John Robertson: What steps he plans to take in negotiations in the Council of Ministers to safeguard the interests of the UK fishing industry; and if he will make a statement.

Huw Irranca-Davies: My approach to the current negotiations will reflect agreements reached with ministerial colleagues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and with the UK industry and other key stakeholders on a balance of appropriate priorities. Those will seek to ensure the long-term sustainability of the stocks in question, while maintaining the future viability of the UK fleet.

John Robertson: I thank my hon. Friend for his answer, but I am sure that he will agree that haggling into the early hours of the morning at the December Council is not desirable. What will he do to ensure that the common fisheries policy is changed to the benefit of Scottish fishermen and UK fishermen as a whole?

Huw Irranca-Davies: My hon. Friend raises a vital point. We need to get away from this haggling until three in the morning in late December. We need to change the CFP, as we made clear in the May and June Councils, where we led from the front. We need to reform the CFP on the basis of good, long-term science, sustainable fish stocks, regionalisation and the long-term viability of all parts of the UK fleet, and away from micro-management, bringing the marine environment and fisheries together. I am pleased to say that we in this Labour Government are right at the forefront of driving that radical change.

Bill Wiggin: Is the Minister aware of how disconnected inshore fishermen feel from discussions with his Department? Now that he is, what does he intend to do about putting that right?

Huw Irranca-Davies: I would counter that. I am aware of a perception in certain parts of the fleet and in certain harbours, where it is widely reported that there is a perception of being disconnected. The reality is that we have set up the sustainable access to inshore fisheries-SAIF-project, and we have a ministerial quadrilateral group on quota reform, in which we are engaged and reaching out to others. In all aspects of our work-including CFP reform, the recent launch of which by the Secretary of State was attended by under-10 metre and over-10 metre producer organisations-we will always reach out to the under-10 metre sector. It is a vital part of our communities and our economy.

Nigel Dodds: The fishing industry in Northern Ireland is almost wholly reliant on prawn, and there is a proposal for a 30 per cent. cut in prawn fishing. Coming on top of further cuts in days at sea and cod quotas, that will have a devastating effect on the Northern Ireland fishing industry, which is already in a perilous state. Can the Minister assure us that he will take on board the very difficult situation in Northern Ireland in his discussions in Brussels?

Huw Irranca-Davies: Yes, I can indeed. I give the hon. Gentleman a categorical assurance that we are continuing to have close discussions with Northern Ireland stakeholders, Ministers and colleagues. Northern Ireland Ministers play a vital part in our negotiating team as well. I was also pleased recently to meet skippers in Portavogie. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that, as we determine the package of UK priorities, Northern Ireland will feature strongly in it.

Dairy Industry

Nicholas Winterton: What recent assessment he has made of the economic prospects of the milk and dairy industry.

Jim Fitzpatrick: We closely monitor the economic prospects of the sector, with an extensive review made on a six-monthly basis. I am also chairing the twice-yearly meeting of the Dairy Supply Chain Forum on 1 December. The forum regularly brings together all the key players in the dairy sector and has been doing so for several years.

Nicholas Winterton: The Minister will know that the UK dairy industry accounts for around 18 per cent. of UK agricultural production by value, is the single largest agricultural sector and is worth £3.5 billion. It is essential to this country, and to my constituency. What assessment has he made of the European Union's proposal to set up a fund for dairy producers, aimed at assisting farmers under pressure from unacceptably low and unfair prices?

Jim Fitzpatrick: Only last week at the Agriculture Council, we raised our serious concerns about the fund that has been set up, which I am sure would meet the hon. Gentleman's concerns as well. We have been asking questions, and I also gave evidence on this item yesterday to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, chaired by the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack). It is not clear how the €280 million is going to be separated and broken down, or what the criteria are for claiming it. We have concerns about that and we are monitoring the situation closely at ministerial and official level.

Patrick McLoughlin: Why does the Minister think that bottles of mineral water sell for more than bottles of milk?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I suspect that it is because the retailers think that people will buy it.

Michael Weir: One of the problems with milk is that the supermarkets often sell it below cost price, which puts huge pressure on the producers. Will the Minister press his colleagues at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to look into this as part of the remit of an ombudsman, if they come forward with such a proposal?

Jim Fitzpatrick: The Dairy Supply Chain Forum regularly looks at these issues, providing an opportunity for all sides of the dairy sector to come together. These matters are discussed there. The Competition Commission's recommendations are being discussed between Government Departments, and I know that this is a key aspect of those discussions. We will be announcing our conclusions in due course.

Bees (Pesticides)

David Taylor: What recent representations he has received on the effect of pesticides on bees and other pollinators; and if he will make a statement.

Dan Norris: My Department has received a number of representations from Members of Parliament and members of the public concerned about the effect of pesticides on bees and other pollinators.

David Taylor: An American scientific report on Syngenta's neonicotinoid pesticide, thiamexotham, shows that it is deadly to honey bees. Does the Minister think that the Warwick university research into bee and pollinator morbidity, which is being funded by Syngenta, will have sufficiently wide terms of reference to assess any links that exist between neonicotinoids and the collapse of UK bee colonies?

Dan Norris: The Government take the health of Britain's bees very seriously and have pumped an extra £4.3 million into bee health. There is no evidence that authorised pesticides pose an unacceptable risk. However, I understand why my hon. Friend asks his question: where somebody is paying, one questions whether the research will be reflective of scientific rigour or not. We will, of course, consider all the research, including that commissioned by pesticide companies, into this important issue, but we will also ensure that the highest possible standards are maintained. I would also quickly say-

Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that we have probably got the gist of the Minister's answer, for which we are grateful. May I gently say to him that he must address the House and try to look in the direction of the Chair?

Christopher Fraser: Given the international aspects and origin of some of the diseases that affect our bees, how much contact has the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or the National Bee Unit had with our counterparts abroad?

Dan Norris: We are in constant liaison and discussions with a whole range of people on the serious issue of bee health. It appears that there is no one cause, so we are looking very carefully at all the possible explanations, which obviously means that we need clear communications with a range of people here and abroad.

Farm-gate Milk Prices

Natascha Engel: What recent discussions he has had with dairy farmers on farm-gate prices for milk.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I have regular discussions with the National Farmers Union, as well as dairy farmers, about this and a range of other issues. I found that the dairy and livestock show in September provided me with a good opportunity to meet dairy farmers and hear first hand about the challenges they are facing.

Natascha Engel: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer, but I would like to press him a little on the European emergency milk fund, which was mentioned earlier. If the problems that were mentioned are ironed out, would he in principle do something to support dairy farmers here, who are really struggling to survive?

Jim Fitzpatrick: Once the arrangements for the distribution of the €280 million are worked out, we would obviously want to ensure that our dairy farmers are not disadvantaged by the price and the cost of supporting farmers on the continent.

Graham Stuart: The British herd of dairy cows is down by more than a fifth since 1997, and the number of dairy farms has halved since 2000. Will the Minister explain why dairy farmers should believe that this Government remain committed to UK production?

Jim Fitzpatrick: By virtue, I hope, of our performance and, in particular, of our negotiating stance in Europe, which is about defending the British dairy industry; and by virtue of the contact and connections, and the support and advice that we give, here in the UK. The Dairy Supply Chain Forum, which I chair, is another indication that we are doing what we can to support our industry. Our industry has innovated and it is rationalised; it is in a better position than that of our European counterparts. We hope that it goes from strength to strength, and we will do all we can to support that.

British Waterways

Joan Walley: What recent representations he has received on the activities of British Waterways in the Stoke-on-Trent area.

Huw Irranca-Davies: No recent representations have been received on the activities of British Waterways in the Stoke-on-Trent area. However, I understand that British Waterways, the local regional development agency and other partners are working together on a variety of projects in the area, reflecting the importance of partnership in working to achieve our shared goals of getting the best from our waterways.

Joan Walley: In anticipation of the representations that the Minister will receive from the Burslem port project, may I welcome the investment in canals? However, will he give his active support in that partnership working to the plans to bring the arm of the Trent and Mersey canal back into use at Burslem port? We want to see the volunteer scheme, which is about to clear the site, matched by a firm commitment from British Waterways to find a way of getting a realistic and feasible business package for it.

Huw Irranca-Davies: I am very happy to pay tribute to my hon. Friend's sterling role in advocating the canals that are so important to her area. In fact, I would be more than happy to meet her to discuss the issue further. Ultimately, it is a question of British Waterways and its partners getting on with the business on the ground, identifying the priorities and driving them forward. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further with my hon. Friend.

Michael Fabricant: Is the Minister aware that studies have shown that the existence of canals can increase economic activity by some 300 per cent. in the areas they serve? What help can he give to the Litchfield and Hatherton canal restoration trust, which will provide the much-needed link between canals in the east and the centre parts of the west midlands?

Huw Irranca-Davies: The hon. Gentleman has raised a valid point. Through our work with British Waterways, the Broads Authority, the inlands waterways authorities and others we have made it clear that we recognise the wider public benefits of canals, not just in terms of recreational boating but, for instance, of health, education and awareness of nature. Again, I do not want to interfere in individual projects-it is important for them to take place on the ground-but I am always happy to meet Members who feel passionate about their own areas.

Charlotte Atkins: Does the Minister share my concern about the fact that Rudyard Sailability and its centre of excellence for disabled sailors at Rudyard lake is still being blocked from building the boat store that is essential to its survival, despite its victory in a public inquiry nine months ago? Will he urge British Waterways, which owns Rudyard lake, to promote talks to save a vital charity that transforms the lives of so many people and their families?

Huw Irranca-Davies: I am grateful for the work that my hon. Friend does as a trustee of RYA Sailability, and we have corresponded on the issue she has raised. The organisation does sterling work in encouraging people of all abilities to participate in sailing activities. I understand that the matter is currently being discussed by the parties involved, and I hope that it will be resolved speedily. I gather that a local British Waterways manager is still helping to broker a solution and will keep my hon. Friend fully informed of the state of the negotiations, but I am happy to discuss the matter further with her.

Flood Defences

Evan Harris: What resources are planned to be made available for the provision of flood defences in (a) west Oxford and (b) Abingdon.

Hilary Benn: As well as continuing its annual programme of maintenance for the main rivers in Oxford, West and Abingdon to manage flood risk, the Environment Agency is nearing the completion of a £1.8 million programme of short-term measures for Oxford, and is developing the long-term Oxford flood risk management strategy, which is currently out for consultation. A study on the River Stert in Abingdon is also taking place to identify options to alleviate flooding.

Evan Harris: As the Secretary of State will know, both west Oxford and Abingdon were badly affected. My constituents appreciated his visit during the floods, and I recognise the work that has been done, but will he agree to meet members of the flood action group and me, with the Environment Agency, so that those people can be reassured that progress will be made before the next flood-which will happen?

Hilary Benn: I should be very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and his group.

Topical Questions

Paul Rowen: If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

Hilary Benn: I wish to inform the House that following routine inventory checks earlier this year, 38 Rural Payments Agency data back-up tapes and one compact disc were unaccounted for. Thirty-five have now been accounted for. Of the rest, one tape and the CD did not contain personal protected data, but the two remaining tapes potentially contained partial data in code. However, tapes of this sort can only be read with specialist equipment and detailed technical knowledge. Furthermore, one of the two tapes was known to be faulty and had been reported as such, since it could not be read.
	I want to reassure farmers that there is no evidence that the tapes are in the public domain, that a forensic investigation was carried out in accordance with Cabinet Office guidelines, and that officials concluded that there was only a low risk that any usable personal data had been lost. I will arrange for further information, including a copy of the investigation report, to be placed in the Library of the House.

Paul Rowen: At the Labour party conference, the Government announced that exemptions from the so-called rain tax would be introduced. Can the Minister confirm that they will involve all charities, and can he tell us when he expects them to be introduced?

Huw Irranca-Davies: I am pleased to be able to update the hon. Gentleman on discussions that we had as recently as the week before last, following the announcement made at the Labour party conference. There has been a very good response. We will introduce a concessionary scheme, subject to legislative opportunities and also to guidance. I think it important for us to get the details right, so that the right organisations benefit from the scheme. It will not be a simple top-down approach; we will be asking people for their thoughts as well.

Jane Kennedy: May I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to reinforce what he said in the earlier part of Question Time by gently saying to Lord Stern that, during British sausage week, we celebrate a varied diet and the value that it brings; that it should be a question of all things in moderation; and that if it is being suggested that vegetarianism will save the world, I am not sure that it is a world in which I want to live?

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I am happy to accept the prompts of my right hon. Friend and to ensure that we communicate her comments and our view-which is clearly the view of the House-to Sir Nicholas Stern.
	One of the things that I ought to have mentioned earlier is that dealing with the waste of 30 to 40 per cent. of all the food that we buy from supermarkets is a far more crucial way of dealing with the problem of emissions. We should be focusing on that.

Nick Herbert: The reason why the Secretary of State has suddenly announced another data loss by the Government is that  Farmers Weekly obtained the information and will report it tomorrow. If the loss was discovered earlier this year and an investigation done, as the Secretary of State said, why have the public not been told until now? This looks like a cover-up. Will he accept responsibility for another foul-up by the Rural Payments Agency, which has already cost taxpayers £70 million in EU fines because of its bungling?

Hilary Benn: I of course accept responsibility. I was informed yesterday and I thought it important to take the first possible opportunity to inform the House, which is what I have done this morning. In accordance with Cabinet Office guidelines, a full investigation was done. As the data were in code that cannot be read, as I have indicated, a judgment was made in accordance with Cabinet Office guidelines that Ministers need not be informed. I wanted to reassure farmers today that the risk of this information getting out is very low, for the reason I have explained to the House at the first available opportunity.

Brian Iddon: The announcement about what the Scout Association called the rain tax was very welcome, especially in the north-west. However, in applying discretionary relief, will my hon. Friend take note of the plight of all political clubs? If the scheme is applied to such clubs, as originally intended, it might result in further closures. I do, of course, declare an interest in this question.

Huw Irranca-Davies: First, I cannot guarantee anything at this moment. The Government are committed to bringing forward proposals on a discretionary scheme at the first available legislative opportunity, and that has been widely welcomed. I would not want to go into detail but I am glad that we have support for this right across the House. We will need to go into detail about who is and is not included, but it is important to acknowledge that this is a cost-neutral issue and, as such, the cost must fall on someone, somewhere-whether that is businesses, individual households or others.

Michael Jack: Pursuant to the Secretary of State's opening comments, the National Audit Office has issued a second damning report into the Rural Payments Agency, which it said had scant regard for protecting public money and had too high a cost base. When will someone at ministerial and senior official level take responsibility for this shambolic organisation, get to grips with it and publish a report about what its future holds?

Hilary Benn: I take responsibility; that is my job. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, the history of the RPA is not a happy one. Since I took up this position, the one thing I have made clear to the Department and to the RPA is that the agency must maintain the improvement it has achieved-we should acknowledge that-in getting payments to farmers more speedily, given the unhappy past. I am not prepared to do anything that gets in the way of doing that, because what farmers want is to get the payments as quickly as possible. There have been previous occasions on which the House has invited me to do things in relation to the RPA, but I am not prepared to put in jeopardy that progress from what was a mess.

Paul Flynn: Should there not be a virement of farm subsidies from farmers whose income has increased to those whose income has not, especially as the income of grain farmers doubled between 2006 and 2008?

Hilary Benn: There is no mechanism I can think of that would enable that to take place. Different parts of the farming industry are in different positions, and the latest information on farm business income will be published shortly.

Laurence Robertson: A constituent of mine is a breeder of alpacas. Have the Government looked into the spreading of bovine TB to alpacas? Is there an appropriate test to ascertain whether that is happening and, if so, is there an appropriate compensation scheme?

Jim Fitzpatrick: The question of alpacas and TB is investigated by the Department. There are arrangements and tests in place, and I am happy to write in detail to the hon. Gentleman about the procedures.

David Taylor: Has the Secretary of State seen the League Against Cruel Sports large-scale survey indicating that 62 per cent. of Conservative voters, 77 per cent. of Liberal Democrat voters and 83 per cent. of Labour voters strongly support the existing legislative ban on hunting with dogs? Does he intend to review the legislation in light of the survey?

Hilary Benn: I have indeed seen the information to which my hon. Friend refers, and it shows where public sentiment and opinion lie. In the light of that, I find it very hard to understand why Opposition Members want to change the law so that foxes can once again be ripped to pieces by hounds, because that is the change in the law they appear to be seeking.

John Baron: May I press the Secretary of State on the Rural Payments Agency? He will know that it has taken far too long to resolve a number of late payments under the single payment scheme. Many farmers throughout the country are suffering as a result, including my constituent Mr. Peter Philpot. I urge the Secretary of State to press forward with the reforms and get these payments sorted out now, for the sake not only of my constituent but of farmers throughout the country.

Hilary Benn: I would be very happy if the hon. Gentleman gave me the details of his constituent, in order to pursue that case. It is precisely for this reason that we announced in September a review of the RPA, so we can learn the lessons and improve the service to the level that farmers have a right to expect.

Charlotte Atkins: Could the Secretary of State give the House an update on the implementation of the ban on hunting with dogs, and particularly on the impact on rural employment?

Hilary Benn: I am not aware of a study having been done on that. We should be aware, however, that when the ban was voted on a lot of predictions were made about the consequences that would flow, but they have not flowed, which is why I do not agree with those who say the legislation is flawed. The onus is on those who want to revisit it to explain why they want to return to a practice that most people do not approve of, as is shown by the evidence that my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) has just drawn to the House's attention.

David Tredinnick: I want to know about the impact of swine flu on farmers in my community. Does the Secretary of State have any evidence that there has been a disproportionate impact on those who work on the land?

Hilary Benn: I am not aware of there having been such a disproportionate impact, but if there is any available information on that I shall find it and write to the hon. Gentleman.

Paddy Tipping: Sixty years have passed since the introduction of national parks by a Labour Government. What more is the Secretary of State going to do to promote access to the countryside?

Huw Irranca-Davies: Indeed, and in this 60th year it is right that we look to the future of the national parks. That is why we are working very hard with the national parks authorities and other agencies to look forward and shape a vision for the future. I suspect that that vision will be concerned with access, sustainable ways of living, living and breathing communities and climate change. The national parks have a critical role to play in the future of this country, and re-imagining what the next 60 years will be like is part of the current review.

Ann Winterton: Is the Minister aware of the risk, if changes are made to the United Kingdom pet travel scheme-it might be extended in 2011-of introducing from the European Union to the United Kingdom a parasite called echinococcosis? An EU-wide risk assessment, followed by a prevention, reduction and control strategy, should be introduced before risking both animal and human health in the United Kingdom.

Jim Fitzpatrick: The hon. Lady rightly raises this concern about any reduction in the protection and safeguards against infection from other countries. That is uppermost in the Government's mind. As she has outlined, we are in discussions with the Commission about extending our derogation for an extra 12 months, and these matters are under very close scrutiny.

Colin Breed: The Secretary of State will be aware that the new grocery suppliers code will cover the relationships between suppliers and the supermarkets and first-tier suppliers. What conversations has he had with his counterparts in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to ensure that the ombudsman's remit and the code can be extended so that farmers will not be subjected to excessive cost and risk?

Jim Fitzpatrick: As I outlined in one of my earlier answers, the Department convenes a number of forums to allow farmers to engage directly with DEFRA and others to discuss these very issues. As I have also said, the Government are considering the question of the ombudsman, and discussions between Departments should reach a conclusion shortly.

Andrew Robathan: As a farmer, I have dealings with the Rural Payments Agency, and I am well aware of its difficulties. May I take the Secretary of State back to the loss of data? He has honourably and quite properly accepted responsibility, yet he was not told about this matter-my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) was told two days ago. What is the Secretary of State going to do to ensure that he is told about things for which he is responsible, given the seriousness of this matter?

Hilary Benn: Any potential loss of data is of course a very serious matter, which is why I wished to report to the House at the very earliest opportunity. As I have indicated, I will provide further information, including a copy of the report on the investigation that took place. I hope that that will offer some reassurance, because I say to the House-I do take this seriously-that when one looks at the form in which the data would be seen by someone who does not have technical knowledge and special equipment, one finds that they would be unreadable. That is why it is important to take this opportunity to reassure farmers about the steps we have taken and the low risk of any data getting out.

Greg Mulholland: Is the Secretary of State aware of the Campaign to Protect Rural England's Mapping local food webs project, which is operating in about 20 locations, including Otley, and is linking local producers, shops and markets? As his constituency is nearby, will he visit those local producers, shops and markets in Otley to see this fantastic scheme working?

Hilary Benn: I am always happy to receive an invitation from the hon. Gentleman, who is my constituency neighbour. This is an excellent project, because we need to link people to opportunities to grow their own food and to supply it to others locally-it is good for our health and good for the climate.

Michael Penning: Is the Secretary of State aware that, four years after the Buncefield explosions in my constituency, the environment and agriculture around the site remain heavily contaminated, particularly with perfluorooctane sulfonate-PFOS? Will he meet me and a delegation of my constituents to discuss their concerns about PFOS contamination?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I remember when the events at Buncefield happened. The hon. Gentleman and I had a number of meetings about tackling the fire, as we are both ex-firemen and I was the Minister with responsibility for dealing with fire. As Minister of State in DEFRA, I will be very happy to meet him and whomever he wishes to bring with him to discuss this important issue.

Business of the House

George Young: May I ask the Leader of the House to give us the business for next week?

Harriet Harman: The business for the week commencing 2 November will be:
	Monday 2 November-Remaining stages of the Perpetuities and Accumulations Bill [ Lords], followed by a general debate on tackling antisocial behaviour.
	Tuesday 3 November-Consideration in Committee of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill (day 1).
	Wednesday 4 November-Further consideration in Committee of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill (day 2).
	Thursday 5 November-General debate on climate change: preparation for the climate change conference at Copenhagen.
	The provisional business for the week commencing 9 November will include:
	Monday 9 November-Consideration of Lords amendments to the Coroners and Justice Bill, followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords amendments.
	Tuesday 10 November-If necessary, consideration of Lords amendments, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Health Bill [ Lords], followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords amendments.
	Wednesday 11 November-Consideration of Lords amendments to the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill, followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords amendments.
	Colleagues will wish to be reminded that the House will meet at 2.30 pm on that day.
	Thursday 12 November-Consideration of Lords amendments to the Policing and Crime Bill, followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords amendments.
	The House is expected to prorogue at the end of business on Thursday 12 November.
	I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 12 November will be:
	Thursday 12 November-A debate on the report from the Health Committee on health inequalities.

George Young: I am grateful to the Leader of the House for next week's business. Will she tell us whether the Prime Minister will be making a statement to the House on Monday after this weekend's meeting of European leaders? Will he be using it to report progress on his preferred candidate for a proposed European president?
	On the Kelly report, will she clarify what the Prime Minister suggested yesterday, namely that Sir Christopher's report
	will form the basis of a statement to the House-[ Official Report, 28 October 2009; Vol. 498, c. 285.]
	next Wednesday? Will she confirm that there will be an oral statement on the Kelly report and will she tell us whether she or the Prime Minister will be making it? It is a matter of great regret that whole sections of the report were leaked to the newspapers yesterday-[Hon. Members: Hear, hear.] Will she reassure us that when it comes to the real Kelly report, the House will be the first to know and not the last to find out? Will she clarify the confusion caused by the Justice Secretary's statement last June that any recommendations would be
	subject to approval by this House-[ Official Report, 29 June 2009; Vol. 495, c. 51.]
	and the No. 10 briefing yesterday that MPs would not be given a vote on Kelly?
	Last week, the right hon. and learned Lady was unable to give me the date of the spring recess. As if there was not already enough mystery surrounding Easter, the Government are now intensifying it. When can she give us the date of the Easter recess and when can she give us the date of the crucial pre-Budget report?
	May we have an urgent update from the business Minister on Royal Mail? We are now in week two of crippling strikes, with small businesses being hit particularly hard, but there is no sign of anyone in the Government showing any leadership. The Prime Minister appears to have given up and the normally ubiquitous Lord Mandelson has disappeared.
	May we have a statement from the right hon. and learned Lady on the Government's consistent sidelining of Parliament? Yesterday my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) raised on a point of order the fact that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government had failed to make a written statement that was directly relevant to the debate that was scheduled for that very afternoon. The week before, the Defence Secretary published 300 pages of the Gray report within two hours of a debate on procurement. As you made clear on both occasions, Mr. Speaker, that was a discourteous way to treat the House. What is the right hon. and learned Lady doing to convey that message to her colleagues?
	Next week, my colleagues might wish to pursue the issue that we have just discovered, namely the serious loss of data by the Rural Payments Agency earlier this year, which only became known in the public domain a few moments ago.
	Finally, we learned today the disturbing news that an Iranian national working as a political analyst in the British embassy in Tehran has been jailed for patently political purposes. May we have an urgent statement from the Foreign Secretary on what is being done to safeguard employees of British embassies around the world?

Harriet Harman: The right hon. Gentleman asked whether the Prime Minister will make a statement following the European Council meeting. It is usual for the Prime Minister to make a statement following major European conferences and summits.
	As for Sir Christopher Kelly's report, I, too, deplore the fact that it has been leaked. We have not seen the report and do not yet know what he proposes or the proposed timescale. We recognise that it is not appropriate for this House to set our own allowances-we know that the public do not want us to set or administer our allowance system. This summer we voted not to do so anymore when we voted to establish the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. Future changes to the allowance system following the Kelly report will therefore be carried out by IPSA. The House will have an opportunity to put forward its views when I make an oral statement next Wednesday, but there will not be a vote to decide on our allowances system because the House has already voted that that will no longer be a matter for us to decide. Decisions on allowances will be made by IPSA.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked about the date for the pre-Budget report and I will announce it in due course. He mentioned the lack of a written statement and the complaint made by the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman). Nobody thinks that what happened was acceptable, and the Secretary of State has apologised.
	On the Gray report, there was an issue about ensuring that that very large report was the subject of an oral statement to the House as quickly as possible. It was a very large report, however, so, rather than delay the statement while colleagues considered the report, the idea was to make the oral statement as quickly as possible. That situation was different from the one raised by the hon. Member for Meriden, which was a mistake and for which an apology has been made.
	On the arrest and detention of the British embassy employee in Iran, the Foreign Secretary has deplored the arrest and asked for an appeal to be heard as soon as possible. He regards the situation as totally unacceptable.

David Heath: May we have a debate on data handling by the Government? We have just had a mini-statement from the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, informing us that material has been lost from the Rural Payments Agency. This is hardly the first time that the Government have lost sensitive material, but meanwhile they continue to collect, by means of the police forces, material that a court has held to be unlawful-in terms of the DNA samples of innocent people. May we have a debate on that issue?
	I, too, deplore the fact that Sir Christopher Kelly's report was partially leaked, but a statement on the report will not be sufficient, because a number of Members from all parts of the House will wish to have their say on the issue. I accept that there will not be a definitive vote, because that power has been given to the independent authority, but the House should have the opportunity to debate the issue. Will the Leader of the House therefore arrange for a debate to take place once the report has been published?
	May I return the Leader of the House to the vexed issue of the presidency of the European Union Council? There seems to be at least two schools of thought on the president's exact role: whether it will be chairmanic, to use the apparent term, or traffic-stopping. The House should have the opportunity to debate what the exact role of any such chairman would be, were the Lisbon treaty to be finally ratified in all states, and who might be a suitable candidate. Members from all parts of the House have strong feelings about not only who might be a good candidate for that post, but who might not.
	I do not think that the right hon. and learned Lady responded to the question from the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) about how we might be kept updated on the postal strike. May we also be kept updated on the conflict in Afghanistan? We must never forget that we have troops in the field in Afghanistan, and that is a matter of importance to the House.
	Finally, I note that, on Thursday 12 November, there is no indication of either a topical or a general debate. May I suggest that, rather than wait around for Prorogation as we normally do, we use the time profitably? May I repeat my request, therefore, that we have a debate on the military covenant? It would be particularly appropriate on 12 November and an opportunity for Members from all parts to raise issues of importance about not just servicemen and ex-servicemen, but their families.

Harriet Harman: I did omit to respond to the point about Royal Mail, so let me say that we are obviously very disappointed that yesterday's talks did not reach a resolution that would have averted the strikes; however, the TUC is willing to continue to facilitate talks, and the Government are urging both sides to continue them. We have been in frequent contact with management and the union, and our message to them has been clear: both sides need to work to resolve the differences through dialogue, via ACAS if necessary, so that we can reach a solution.
	The hon. Gentleman talked about the loss of data by the Rural Payments Agency, but that was dealt with in oral questions to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, so I do not have anything to add to what my right hon. Friend said. I see no connection at all between that loss and the collection of bio data on the DNA database. Think of all the murders that have been solved through the use of DNA data, all the offenders brought to justice, and all the sexual offenders who went unpunished before DNA evidence was available. I really think that the Liberal Democrats should get off the fence on this. The collection of DNA is a proportionate measure to ensure that offenders do not go unpunished. Any link between that and the RPA is tenuous.
	Colleagues will have an opportunity to have their say on our allowances following my oral statement to the House. Again, the hon. Gentleman should make up his mind: does he really think it right that this House should pick over the question of our allowances when we have already decided to make that the responsibility of an independent authority? He cannot be on both sides of the argument; he either wants that decision reached independently, which is what this House has voted for, or he wants it to be picked over again in the House. The public want a transparent, fair arrangement for allowances, and-you know what?-they do not want us to be doing it. I do not think that extended debate, whether followed by a vote or not, helps the situation.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about Europe. We are very clear on our position on this. I thought that the Lib Dems, too, felt that it is important that this country is in the mainstream of Europe and that Europe is effective in safeguarding the interests of all European countries in a globalised economy and in terms of the globalised challenge to tackle climate change and the globalised efforts to ensure security. We want to be at the heart of Europe and for Europe to be strong on those issues. Of course, it is in Britain's interests, if, as we hope, the Lisbon treaty is ratified, that a Briton-Tony Blair-should take up the post. [Hon. Members: Ah!] That is what the Prime Minister said yesterday in Prime Minister's questions, in case anybody thinks there is anything novel about that.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about Afghanistan. We constantly have at the forefront of our mind the task of our troops, the price that is paid by our troops, and the importance of their work in Afghanistan. Indeed, the Prime Minister referred to that yesterday. We had a defence debate that covered the military covenant a couple of weeks ago. As I reported to the House last week, it is very important that we recognise not only the work that is done by our troops but the support given to them by their families. Part of the military covenant also relates not only to our troops, and to veterans, but to Army, Air Force and Navy wives.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Mr. Speaker: Order. Twenty-eight Members are seeking to catch my eye. I am keen to accommodate as many as possible, but I am looking, particularly today, for single, short supplementary questions without preamble, and for brief replies.

Natascha Engel: Tomorrow is an historic day when you, Mr. Speaker, will preside over debate on these green Benches by the UK Youth Parliament. Will the Leader of the House grant us a statement or a debate when we can mark this historic occasion and perhaps discuss some of the lessons that we will learn?

Harriet Harman: It will be an important occasion. I am looking forward to participating in it myself, as will hon. Members in all parts of the House, and no doubt we will be able to report back.

Justine Greening: My constituent, Mary McKie, is about to be repossessed next week, even though the Treating Customers Fairly regime should apply to her. Her mortgage debt has been sold to a company that is totally outside the Financial Services Authority's remit-Webb Resolutions-and even though her mortgage is a third of her property's value, she is not being given a chance to sell her home and pay back the debt. Can the Leader of the House allow us to have a debate on Treating Customers Fairly so that thousands of constituents in a similar position can have their concerns heard?

Harriet Harman: On the general issue of repossessions, there will be Treasury questions next week, when it will be possible to question the Chancellor and the Treasury team about the Treasury's approach to the protection of people who lose their job or suffer a fall in their income because a family member loses their job or someone is working on short time.
	As to the hon. Lady's constituent, I will get back to her when I have worked out which would be the best Department to approach to see whether some assistance can be given. We do not want anyone who finds themselves in financial difficulties to have to lose their home if arrangements can be made for them to defer the payment of their mortgage interest. We want to ensure that every help is given to them.
	It is important to recognise that the rate of increase in repossessions is lower than that predicted by the Council of Mortgage Lenders, and we want to ensure that we help everyone affected.

Mark Fisher: Can the Leader of the House tell us whether a bribery Bill will be included in the Queen's Speech and receive a Second Reading soon afterwards? She will recall that it was considered in draft in April and received widespread support from all parties. Will she find time for it to be concluded?

Harriet Harman: My hon. Friend will know that it was included in the Government's draft legislative programme, which we published earlier this year. Of course, the Queen's Speech will announce on 18 November which Bills have made it into the legislative programme.

Michael Fallon: Will there be a follow-up statement on the lessons of the Nimrod disaster, and how many of the named individuals do the Government expect to accept responsibility and resign?

Harriet Harman: The Secretary of State for Defence made a statement to the House yesterday, and there will be Defence questions next week if there are any further points that the hon. Gentleman wishes to pursue.

Andrew Miller: We are surrounded by leaks, both in the House and outside, and we will never carry the public with us on data-sharing issues unless we can demonstrate that we can look after things properly ourselves. May we have an urgent debate in Government time on information assurance?

Harriet Harman: We have had a number of debates over recent months in response to particular such issues, and that might possibly be a good topic for an Adjournment debate or a debate in Westminster Hall.

Andrew MacKay: When my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) quite reasonably asked the Leader of the House whether the Prime Minister would make a statement about the European summit on Monday, she replied, That is usual. Would it not have been better to have said Yes, or is the Prime Minister dithering again?

Harriet Harman: The custom and practice is that the Leader of the House does not announce on a Thursday the statements for the following week, because they are often subject to change at the last minute. I announce the fixed programme of business for the week, and all that I have done is remind the House what is custom and practice. The right hon. Gentleman's point is bogus and spurious, and I cannot see why he bothered to make it.

Geraldine Smith: It is painfully clear to the whole country that the two sides in the postal dispute cannot reach agreement. Will the Minister with responsibility for postal services come to the House and explain why he will not instruct Royal Mail to go to arbitration so that we can stop the dispute?

Harriet Harman: The Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills made a statement a week or so ago setting out the Government's position that we want to ensure that further disputes are avoided, as no doubt everybody does, above all in the interests of Royal Mail's customers but also in the interests of its staff and the organisation as a whole.

James Clappison: Is the Leader of the House aware that it emerged yesterday in evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee that the rules and procedures of the proposed European presidency are being fashioned in secrecy, and that the European Council proposes to adopt them straight away without the opportunity for scrutiny or debate in this House? Might we have some debate at least about the proposed new presidency?

Harriet Harman: If indeed the Prime Minister were to make a statement next week, the hon. Gentleman could raise that point with him, hypothetically.

Barry Sheerman: Will my right hon. and learned Friend organise an early debate on insolvency fees and solicitors' fees? Many individuals who lose their businesses and homes find themselves taken to the cleaners by those fees, which are as high as £400 an hour.

Harriet Harman: We want to make absolutely sure that we leave no stone unturned as the country and businesses face the current difficult economic situation. My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I will bring it to the attention of Treasury Ministers. It might be one that he should raise at Treasury questions next week.

Greg Mulholland: In August, in reply to a letter, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Ipswich (Chris Mole), told me that the Government were reneging on the promise of extra rail carriages on busy west Yorkshire lines in favour of electrification between Manchester and Liverpool and between London and Swansea. When will a Minister come to the House and give a statement to tell the people of Yorkshire about that, and when can we finally have a debate on the poor deal that this Government give public transport in Yorkshire?

Harriet Harman: The reality is that more passengers and more freight are being carried by train than ever before and the trains are more on time than ever before, so I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's general proposition that the situation on the railways is poor or will be in future. That is far from the case, but I will draw his specific points to the attention of the transport team, who will write to him.

Ann Coffey: Portcullis House has a G rating for energy use, the worst rating that any building can have. May I urge my right hon. and learned Friend to enlist the advice of Green2Go, a company in my constituency that has developed a biofuel based on waste cooking oil, on how the energy rating of Portcullis House can be improved?

Harriet Harman: The G energy rating from 2008 recognised that although the initial design of Portcullis House received an excellent rating under the Building Research Establishment's environmental assessment method, significant changes in function-specifically increased catering and more intensive occupation, with more people using the building-have resulted in significant energy consumption. That is why it now has a G rating. An estate-wide environmental assessment is under way and will identify improvement options for the future, and no doubt Green2Go from Stockport ought to feed into it. Meanwhile we must all play our part in helping the parliamentary estate to reduce its carbon footprint by turning off our televisions and ensuring that we do not use heating and air conditioning excessively.

Nigel Dodds: May we have a debate on the next steps in the Lisbon treaty saga? It is clear from Members of all parties that such a debate would be a matter of great interest, not only in relation to the EU presidential issue but because it would allow each party in the House to spell out to the British people in advance of a general election where it stands on a referendum. The parties could make it clear, as they go to the people, that there will be a referendum come what may, so that the people of the United Kingdom will have their say as promised by the Government and the Opposition.

Harriet Harman: A series of statements about Europe are made by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, and no doubt the hon. Gentleman will shortly find an opportunity to raise that point.

Jeremy Corbyn: The postal workers are back on strike because they are frightened about job losses, bullying management and the future of a vital public service. It seems extraordinary that Ministers do not have more hands-on involvement. May I repeat the calls made by other Members for a special debate to be held, as urgently as possible, on the future of the Post Office and the situation facing postal workers?

Harriet Harman: Ministers are hands-on, with the intention of getting the management and the union to agree to settle their differences for the sake of the people who use Royal Mail and those who work in it.

Peter Bone: Yesterday the Paymaster General confirmed, at column 273 of  Hansard, that the Government rank ministerial Departments. The Ministry of Defence is ranked 21st out of 23. That is unacceptable, especially when we are fighting a war in Afghanistan. I genuinely ask the Leader of the House whether we can have a proper statement on the matter next week, so that we can question that priority.

Harriet Harman: There are Defence questions on Monday, when the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to raise that matter.

Denis MacShane: I do not know whether the Leader of the House heard the remarkable defence by a Conservative party spokesman on Today this morning of Mr. Michal Kaminski, whom the chief rabbi of Poland has condemned for having been a member of a neo-Nazi party and who whitewashes the massacre of Jews in world war two. May we have an early debate on anti-Semitism and the importance of getting the history of world war two and the massacres of Jews right, particularly with reference to MEPs, not just these Poles but those from other countries? We need to get this matter cleared up and the Opposition's shameful alliance exposed to the whole world.

Harriet Harman: Every year in this House, we have a debate on Holocaust memorial day, which is well attended and passionately supported by hon. Members of all parties. Not only what we do in this country and in this Chamber but how we conduct ourselves internationally is important. My right hon. Friend is right-no one in this country, particularly the Opposition, should consort with holocaust deniers, climate change deniers and homophobes. That is not the way that Britain wants to go.

Peter Atkinson: The Leader of the House did not answer the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) about the dates of the Easter recess. What is her problem?

Harriet Harman: I will announce the future calendar in due course. I have not got any problems, but if I do, I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be the first to know.

Jim Sheridan: May we have a debate on excessive bank charges? My right hon. and learned Friend may be aware of Bank of Scotland's recent announcement that it would raise its overdraft charges for current account holders. That could mean up to 300 per cent. increases for some people. May I ask her to use the Government's influence with that bank to get it to reconsider those proposals?

Harriet Harman: We recognise that bank overdraft charges are a source of public frustration in dealing with banks. We issued a call this summer in our White Paper for a speedy resolution to the millions of complaints that have been lodged with the Office of Fair Trading about overdraft charges. We expect a court decision soon on that matter and we are also working on reforms that will force banks to be much more transparent about terms and conditions. There will be Treasury questions next week, when my hon. Friend will have an opportunity to raise the matter with Treasury Ministers.

David Tredinnick: Has the Leader of the House had time to consider the reduction by half of the guests' and Members' seating in the Terrace Cafeteria? Does she agree that that is an important facility for Members who bring guests into the House? Is she aware that there has been no consultation on the matter? Does she agree that the seating should be restored, and not after Christmas as proposed?

Harriet Harman: There was less usage of the Members' part of the cafeteria than of the part for all others working in the Commons. It was a shame that those working in the House were having their meals in a place that was absolutely packed out when the Members' part was very underused. In response to that, the idea was to move the partition at a small cost to see whether that led to better usage. The matter will be kept under review, but I do not think there is any point in keeping tables and chairs empty.

Tom Watson: Arts Council England is facing its second major reorganisation in a decade. A debate would allow us to examine the scope of that, the number of staff being made redundant and the number who have been rehired as consultants.

Harriet Harman: Obviously, we have to ensure, particularly as we look ahead to deficit reduction, that every pound of public money is properly spent, and that includes in the arts. The British economy as well as the quality of our life in this country is massively enhanced by the arts and the Arts Council's work. We obviously want to ensure that it is not only properly funded but spends all its money properly. My hon. Friend can probably raise the matter in Treasury questions.

Michael Penning: May I again raise Criminal Records Bureau checks with the Leader of the House? They were brought in to protect the innocent and the young, but they are also blighting the lives of innocent people who have malicious accusations made against them, which remain on record. I have several such cases in my constituency. People cannot clear those CRB checks and the law needs to be changed. May we have a debate?

Harriet Harman: We all agree that we need a sensible and proportionate approach, which puts children's safety first and ensures that the system is manageable. I cannot think of an immediate opportunity to raise the matter, but I will consider whether the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families needs to update the House. I know that several developments have taken place that he might want to report to the House.

Derek Twigg: May we have a debate on the importance of public expenditure on large infrastructure projects, which create many jobs? For instance, the proposed Mersey gateway would create hundreds of jobs through its construction and around 4,000 jobs after its construction.

Harriet Harman: The Planning Act 2008 and the opportunity for a more streamlined approach to major infrastructure projects will no doubt help not only my hon. Friend's constituency but others places around the country.

Philip Hollobone: Given that the number of annual hospital admissions for alcohol-related injuries has more than doubled in the north of Northamptonshire to 5,451 in the past six years, may we have a debate in Government time on drink-related violence and the Government's 24-hour drinking culture?

Harriet Harman: I think it was the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that we have the topical debate on fireworks this afternoon, and doubtless he will make a long and interesting speech. I note that he is now making another suggestion, which we will consider alongside others. Misuse of alcohol and alcohol-related injuries are serious matters and I will consider his suggestion.

David Taylor: I declare an interest as a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. May we have a debate on better regulation of the accountancy profession? There are egregious examples of firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers frequently having conflicts of interest by acting as company adviser, bank adviser and then administrator. That insolvency gravy train must be derailed as soon as possible in the interests of all so that we are not in a position whereby the practitioners get the pounds and creditors get the pence.

Harriet Harman: My hon. Friend has made another important point about the way in which insolvencies are handled. It is probably more of a question for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills than for the Treasury, although it is obviously a matter for both. I will consider how it perhaps needs to be taken forward in the House.

Christopher Fraser: Given that recent research by the Prostate Cancer Charter for Action shows great inequalities still existing in the NHS for prostate cancer services, will the Leader of the House find time for a debate in the near future on that important issue?

Harriet Harman: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman might consider seeking the opportunity for a debate in Westminster Hall or on the Adjournment-

Christopher Fraser: I have done that.

Harriet Harman: In addition, I will ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health to consider the matter. There is no doubt that proper awareness of the opportunity for screening for prostate cancer and early intervention are important for prevention and treatment. It is an important issue, on which we can make progress.

David Drew: May I support those who are calling for an urgent debate on the situation facing Royal Mail? May I also ask for consideration to be given to sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, who face immense problems at this time? Is it not right that the Government, as the shareholder, should examine ways how they can provide support to ensure that we do not lose more of those invaluable services?

Harriet Harman: We are committed to the post office network and the important work done by sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, and my hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the fact that it is not only those directly employed by and working for Royal Mail who are affected by the dispute. Not only businesses who use the services and the people who rely on them are affected, but the post office network is too. I will draw the matter to the attention of Business, Innovation and Skills Ministers.

Graham Stuart: Thousands of people replied to the consultation on the Badman review of elective home education. Many pointed to the lack of evidence and the weakness of the data that underlay his recommendations. May we have a debate in Government time on home education so that Ministers can be informed by it before they introduce any draft legislation?

Harriet Harman: Again, that is something that could usefully be debated in Westminster Hall or on the Adjournment.

David Chaytor: To revert to the European Union, is not the deeper issue not only the relative merits of individual candidates but the fact that so many hon. Members still oppose the Lisbon treaty, and that a considerable minority of hon. Members oppose Britain's membership of the EU? Is that not the most powerful argument for a full debate about our future relationship with the EU, and whether it should be one of isolation or of full participation? If the Government are considering any sort of referendum, should it not be on our membership so that those who oppose the consensus of the past third of a century have the opportunity to say so?

Harriet Harman: The Government-the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary-have made it absolutely clear where we believe Britain's interest lies. Our interests in terms of the economy, tackling climate change and security depend on our working together with our European partners, and not in drawing away from them at precisely the time when international co-operation is absolutely essential. It is also important that we have a strong Europe to work with the United States, China and India, so we will be pressing forward for better co-operation and working in Europe, and putting Britain at the heart of Europe.

Paul Flynn: May we debate early-day motion 2180 and the Government's Sustainable Development Commission's conclusion that the cost and problems of new nuclear power stations far outweigh any benefits?
	 [That this House notes th at on 26 October the Government' s Sustainable Developmen t Commission said that they had ' found the problems of nuclear power far outweigh the potential benefits' ; agrees with this timely and sensible assessment; and calls on the Government to abandon proposals to build new nuclear power stations.]

Harriet Harman: There will be questions for the Department of Energy and Climate Change next week, when my hon. Friend can raise that issue.

Personal Statement

Tony McNulty: With permission, I would like to make a personal statement. I should like to thank the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges for the report and memorandum that was published this morning. I should like especially to thank the commissioner for his diligence and courtesy throughout this investigation. I am grateful that he recognises that I was within the rules of this House in establishing and claiming parliamentary allowances for my constituency home. I welcome his acceptance that my claims were necessarily incurred and that I consistently claimed significantly below the maximum allowed.
	I accept fully that I made careless mistakes on both mortgage interest and council tax claims, for which I apologise unreservedly to the House, but I identified those errors and repaid them in full in April and May 2009.
	I further accept the admonition from the commissioner about the informal nature of my arrangements. I regret that I did not recognise that a more formal arrangement would have been wise and preferable so as to avoid the risk of an appearance of benefit, and I apologise for that.
	The commissioner has accepted that my claims have the effect of abating all costs except mortgage interest and council tax, and were therefore in line with advice that was given to me by the Department of Resources, which was repeated to him as recently as three months ago. He has, however, challenged that advice-that mortgage interest as a fixed cost need not be abated-and has determined that it was too narrow. He has recognised that his conclusion is at odds with the Department's advice, which he accepts I followed.
	I fully accept that this investigation has been an opportunity to shine further light on both the advice given and the rules as they pertained at the time, and that the commissioner has every right to redefine such advice and apply it retrospectively. Indeed, had the advice been given to me in terms that have now been suggested by the commissioner, I would of course have acted differently.
	None the less, I accept the report's conclusions in full, including the requirement to repay, with no complaint, and I apologise without reservation to the House. I should have been much clearer about my arrangements and taken steps to ensure that I was not open to any charge of benefit, and I should have had much more concern for how these rules were perceived by the public, rather than just following them.
	I apologise for any part I have played in the diminution of the standing of this House in the eyes of the public. It is, however, time to move on. I apologise to the House once again without reservation, Mr. Speaker; and I thank you for allowing me to make this personal statement and for helping me to set a course to do all that I can in future to restore the trust and faith of my constituents and the public generally in our politics.

Fireworks Safety

Topical debate

Ian Lucas: I beg to move,
	That this House has considered the matter of fireworks safety.
	This is, of course, a most timely and topical debate, as we are one week away from 5 November, which is traditionally celebrated with fireworks to remember that small group of recalcitrant gunpowder plotters who attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.
	So far, the main fireworks season this year, which included Diwali a couple of weeks ago, has passed without serious incident, and I hope that it remains that way through the rest of this week and next week. Over the next two weeks, millions of fireworks will be sold and used, safely and considerately, in back garden displays; and hundreds of thousands of others will attend professionally organised and safely fired public displays. Contacts that my officials have had so far this year with various police forces- [ Interruption. ]

Paul Flynn: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it not extraordinary that we are into the debate, but nobody is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench?

Madam Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order for the Chair, but the hon. Gentleman's comments have been noted.

Ian Lucas: As I was saying, my Department has-

Peter Bone: rose-

Ian Lucas: I will certainly give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Peter Bone: The Minister is talking about injury to human beings. One of my constituents, Andrew Meads, has campaigned for a long time about the damage that fireworks do to animals. Does the Minister have a view on that?

Ian Lucas: I will be coming to that later in my speech, but I certainly have a view on the matter. The effect of fireworks on animals is a serious issue, and it is important to take animals into account in the measures that we take.

David Drew: I accept that fireworks are part of our culture and they are very exciting to all of us. There have been genuine campaigns on this issue, and surely it is about time that we had some restrictions on who can sell fireworks throughout the whole year. One accepts that we are a bit more lenient coming up to 5 November, but there are shops that seem to be able to sell fireworks every day of every month of the year. Surely in this day and age that is not right.

Ian Lucas: The Fireworks Act 2003 placed new restrictions on dealing in fireworks. I will be going into those in more detail later in my speech.

Tom Watson: The legislation as it stands has made the use of fireworks more enjoyable for many Sandwell residents. If they have one question for the Minister, it is this: could he make them just a little bit quieter? What measures does the Department take to monitor complaints about noise?

Ian Lucas: Clearly the issue of noise continues to cause concern, and we are monitoring it closely within the Department. It is the aspect of fireworks that is of most concern to constituents, and it is the thing that is most brought to our attention.

Robert Flello: Before my hon. Friend moves on, may I say that the concern often raised with me, in addition to those that hon. Members have mentioned, is the availability of fireworks via the internet? That is of great concern. I am sure that the vast majority of shops meet their requirements carefully and closely, but unfortunately, on the internet, fireworks do not seem to be quite so closely monitored and controlled. Does my hon. Friend have a view on that?

Ian Lucas: I do not have a view on that, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the matter with me. I will certainly look at it in more detail.

David Taylor: Firework sellers who break the law can face stiff fines or even prison, but is the Minister satisfied with the adequacy of the penalties available when people misuse fireworks? People over the age of 10 can get a fixed penalty ticket, but last week, as I was walking home in the Vincent square area, a group of youths were throwing lit fireworks at passers by. That sort of thing is absolutely and unacceptably dangerous. Surely we need to review that legislation.

Ian Lucas: Clearly, the sort of behaviour that my hon. Friend describes is completely unacceptable. Of course, there would be sanctions for that sort of behaviour in the criminal law other than those available under fireworks legislation. That type of behaviour would be a criminal offence.
	We have made progress on fireworks. Post from my constituency on the matter has decreased substantially since I was elected in 2001, but we continue to treat the matter very seriously.

Derek Twigg: I get fewer complaints than I used to before the Act was passed, but there are still problems with some idiots abusing fireworks. Has there been any analysis of the number of complaints since the Act, and whether it has gone down or up?

Ian Lucas: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. In fact, I made some inquiries within the Department about the decline in the number of complaints. In 2004, some 870 letters were sent by Members to the Department about the misuse of fireworks, and that has declined to some 140 this year, so there has been a substantial diminution. As we know, Members are strongly motivated by complaints made to their constituency offices, so that is a general indicator of the success of the legislation.

Nigel Dodds: Has the Minister had a look at the situation in Northern Ireland, which has had legislation restricting the private sale of fireworks except for organised and licensed displays? The number of complaints has diminished, although there are still some idiots-as the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) rightly characterised them. What lessons have been learned from the regime in Northern Ireland?

Ian Lucas: I am pleased to hear that the position has improved in Northern Ireland. We monitor the position constantly to try to improve things in the whole of the UK, and we need to learn lessons from any area that has benefited from statutory action.

Michael Penning: I apologise for being slightly late for the start of the debate.
	As a former fireman whose life was blighted regularly each year by fireworks, I ask the Minister to look not only at MPs' postbags but at the injuries caused, especially to young people and those who think that they are in control of themselves, but are not, especially if they have had a drink. The injuries are horrific, and our accident and emergency departments are still full of people injured by themselves and others by means of fireworks.

Ian Lucas: If the hon. Gentleman is patient, I will address that issue. He is right to say that the injuries are serious, and I shall be interested to hear his remarks, given his experience.
	Contacts that my officials have had so far this year with various police forces, fire services and trading standards departments indicate that the start of the firework season has been quiet in all senses of the word. However, the enjoyment of millions can be threatened, as so often is the case, by the thoughtless, selfish and often criminal actions of a minority. Fireworks can be fun if they are used in a responsible and sensible fashion, but it is the actions of that minority who continue to let fireworks off in the street, who buy fireworks and give them to under 18s and who think it funny to let off fireworks in the early hours of the morning, well after the curfew has come into operation, frightening people and animals alike, who threaten to spoil it for everyone else.
	Since 2000 or so, the use and popularity of fireworks have grown, albeit slowly. Part of this rise can be attributed to a change in the type of fireworks available to consumers. The traditional family selection box that I recall from many years ago is now rivalled by large single ignition multi-shot cakes, a display in a box, which were virtually unheard of 10 years ago. The popularity of these fireworks can be attributed to their safety: lighting them once sets off a display letting off anything from 10 to 200-plus effects. Obviously that may mean that some garden displays now have more bangs in them as overall they have more effects in them.

Michael Penning: What the Minister has just said is not factually true. That sort of firework is not safer, because once set off, it cannot be stopped. If it has 200 projectiles, they all have to go off and cannot be controlled.

Ian Lucas: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says and I take his point about the inability to stop the process, but the number of times that the individual comes into direct contact with the fireworks is reduced.
	The new types of fireworks may have led to the perception that more noisy fireworks are let off each year. Another reason is the growing popularity of fireworks for use at weddings and civil partnerships, anniversaries, birthdays and other celebratory events. Such usage was unusual in the past, but it is developing. This trend has spread the traditional use of fireworks from bonfire night to other nights of the year.
	It is important that the Government take an active role when it comes to issuing firework safety messages. My Department has been communicating such messages throughout Diwali and will continue to do so in the run-up to 5 November. We have worked closely with the Department for Children, Families and Schools to promote child safety during the firework season, which complements my Department's aim to promote firework safety in general.
	There are two main audiences for firework safety messages. The first is the general public who hold displays in their back garden for their children, and who may not be aware of the firework code and safe practices, thereby putting themselves and their own and other children at the risk of serious injury. The second is the retailers of fireworks: we must encourage them to sell fireworks responsibly and remind them of their obligations under the Fireworks Regulations 2004, which are helping to tackle firework crime and misuse.
	The aims of the activity delivered by my Department and DCSF are to ensure that consumers have adequate information about firework safety; to reduce the number of fireworks-related injuries by ensuring the public are adequately aware of the risks and dangers posed by fireworks; and to encourage retailers to sell fireworks responsibly to over-18s and remind them of their obligations under the relevant fireworks legislation.
	The messages are being communicated by an existing stock of TV and radio advertisements about fireworks safety on commercial and BBC stations. These are fillers that are placed, free of charge, in unused air-time. We also produce news releases carrying safety messages, aimed at the regional press. We also engage with key stakeholders such as the Child Accident Prevention Trust and the British Fireworks Association.
	The fireworks website www.direct.gov.uk/fireworks has also been updated and is being promoted on the home page of Directgov. The website contains free resources that can be downloaded to help with the promotion of the safe use of fireworks. This includes schools packs; a campaign toolkit aimed at trading standards departments to enable them to undertake local initiatives; an information leaflet for retailers; and copies of the fireworks code as leaflets and posters.

Robert Flello: I have noticed that the information provided with fireworks talks about the distance that should be maintained from the lit firework-for example, 25 metres. Given the trend towards smaller gardens, should the recommended distances be replaced with warnings that particular fireworks are not suitable for small gardens? That could make matters clearer and more specific and would stop people buying fireworks that they think are appropriate for the size of their garden, but are in fact not.

Ian Lucas: My hon. Friend makes a sensible and helpful point, and I will certainly take it back to the Department.
	We have tried to make the information on the website as accessible as possible, and it includes games for children to play so that they can benefit from information on this serious issue in an accessible and fun way.

Barry Sheerman: I wonder if my hon. Friend agrees with me on this matter, although he might think my position strange given that I represent Huddersfield, which is home to Standard Fireworks-the largest fireworks company in the land, although unfortunately it now manufactures fewer of them and mainly imports from China. I have been campaigning on this matter for many years. The safest place for fireworks is around a proper community fire with community fireworks, not in people's backyards. I know that I have made myself unpopular on this subject, but that would be the best option-and a much less polluting one, given the amount of pollution given off by the hundreds of thousands of bonfires up and down the country.

Ian Lucas: I have heard my hon. Friend's views, and I know that a number of hon. Members hold similar ones. The Government have considered this issue over many years, but we have taken the view that it is part of our culture and can be dealt with as we are dealing with it-through a balanced approach and allowing, with limitations, the use of fireworks in a private environment.

John Mason: To follow up on that point, does the Minister at least agree that via publicity and so on we should encourage people to go to such public events? Councils such as that in Glasgow and elsewhere put on excellent events that are actually much better than those that people hold in their own gardens.

Ian Lucas: I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. I have been at displays that were certainly far better than my inadequate efforts in my back garden many years ago. I encourage everyone to go to and enjoy public displays because they are much more entertaining.

Jeremy Wright: May I take the Minister back to a point he made earlier in reference to what we are discussing now? Is it not the case that often people will go to an organised display, but will also have fireworks displays in their back gardens? The problem is that the fireworks season now extends to about a quarter of the year. We need to start saying to people that it might be nicer if they were considerate to their neighbours and did not set off quite so many fireworks quite so often.

Ian Lucas: It is an exaggeration to say that the fireworks season extends that far. There was a major concern a few years ago that fireworks were being used for far too long a period, but in my experience that has diminished to some extent. For the most part, we now have a relatively truncated fireworks season, which I think is a good thing.
	Increasing numbers of displays now have a children's display, and some large public displays have-

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am afraid that the Minister has had his allotted time. I call Mr. Adam Afriyie.

Adam Afriyie: I am delighted that this debate has arisen today. It covers an important issue, and provides a timely opportunity to consider whether stronger fireworks safety regulations are needed. I welcome the debate, therefore, and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) for his vigorous campaigning. It is an important issue, and I think that the Minister has highlighted some of the dangers and joys of the use of fireworks.
	Some 500 years ago, terrorists attempted to blow up this place. Their plot failed, but they succeeded in placing an annual event in the British calendar, and to this day we mark the occasion with bonfires and fireworks on bonfire night. Fireworks form part of our history and culture, not only on bonfire night, but on new year's eve, and others use them for weddings and during Diwali, Eid and Hanukkah.
	There are two kinds of fireworks. First we have the thrilling fireworks of celebration, entertainment and joy. They provide the glittering spectacles that excite our children and set our hearts pumping. They are the fireworks watched on the millennium's eve and at the opening of the Olympics. They are the fireworks that bring our families and communities closer together and bind our society closer still with a sense of common history and heritage. And they are the fireworks that, if used responsibly, bring jobs and livelihoods to thousands of people. If we are talking about those kinds of fireworks, I am completely and wholeheartedly in favour of them.
	There is, however, a second kind of firework: the misused fireworks of the irresponsible and antisocial. They are the fireworks that startle horses, pets and wildlife. They are the fireworks that unexpectedly break a good night's sleep. And they are the fireworks that ignorant people misuse, causing danger, harm and injury to others. If we are talking about those kinds of fireworks, I am completely against them.
	Fireworks are explosives, which pose a potent risk of injury, and it is important that we consider those risks from time to time. I am glad that we are doing so today. In a civilised, democratic society, it falls on us to consider the risks, evidence, statistics and options available so that we can come to a balanced judgment. We must take that responsibility seriously on behalf of the people who elected us. Our priority must be strong and effective rules or alternative measures to underpin the safety of fireworks. We took the responsibility seriously in 2003-before my time here-and I am pleased that Conservatives at that time, alongside Members of all parties, supported the Fireworks Act 2003.

Shona McIsaac: Very few.

Adam Afriyie: It was not an uncontroversial Act.

Shona McIsaac: It was.

Adam Afriyie: It was not uncontroversial, because it contained enabling measures bestowing the power on a future Secretary of State to create regulations and make decisions that were at that point undefined. Conservatives are always uneasy when the Government take on new powers without defining them. However, the Fireworks Act was a good step forward, and we are glad that it is in place.

Ian Lucas: I ought to pay tribute to my former colleague, Bill Tynan, who took forward the Fireworks Act. I omitted to do that earlier, but the step that he took was worth while. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree with me on that.

Adam Afriyie: I thank the Minister for his intervention. That debate on fireworks safety, which led to the introduction of the legislation, was conducted sensibly and rationally. It was a good step in the right direction, although there is always hesitation from Conservative Members over enabling legislation.
	This is not the first time, therefore, that we have considered fireworks safety. There has been a raft of fireworks safety legislation and regulations stretching back to the Explosives Act 1875. There followed the Protection of Animals Act 1911, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the General Product Safety Regulations 1994, the Fireworks (Safety) Regulations 1997, the Fireworks Act 2003, the Fireworks Regulations 2004, the Fireworks (Safety) (Amendment) Regulations 2004 and the Fireworks (Scotland) Regulations 2004.

Peter Bone: Has my hon. Friend considered the later Animal Welfare Act 2006, which puts a duty of care on pet owners, and how that duty relates to the damage done by fireworks and the distress caused to animals? Has that been taken into account?

Adam Afriyie: Very much so, which is why I mentioned in my opening remarks that we have to consider the irresponsible use of fireworks at non-designated times, which can have a dreadful impact. In Windsor, we have two race courses and a wonderful array of wildlife, but horses, dogs and cats are startled by the use of fireworks. It is really important to consider that, especially when there is a legal obligation on the owners of pets and animals to take care of their well-being. There is a bit of a conflict, therefore, and I hope that it will be explored further during the debate.

Jeremy Wright: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the difficulties for animal owners is the unexpected use of fireworks? If we have an organised display on 5 November, everyone knows that they have to prepare their pets and horses for the event, but when they do not know that the fireworks are coming, they cannot do the necessary preparation and look after their animals properly.

Adam Afriyie: Quite right. My hon. Friend has put the point clearly and fairly eloquently. As I said, I hope that those points will be picked up and examined further during this short debate.
	Looking back through previous debates, it seems that almost everything has been considered on many previous occasions. Today we have an opportunity to examine the evidence and to see whether anything has changed to warrant further regulations or changes. We are happy to discuss how the existing regulations might be improved, because we want the risks to be managed sensibly and effectively. However, we think that a complete ban on the sale of fireworks would be a disproportionate response. We do not want to be killjoys or to ban everything that carries a risk, nor do we want to introduce a draconian state-sanctioned prohibition without clear evidence that it is necessary. It is wrong to punish the thousands of families and communities who put on safe and enjoyable firework displays at designated times and in the correct manner. It cannot be right that the actions of an antisocial minority dictate the lifestyles of the majority.

John Mason: The hon. Gentleman says that he would not like a complete ban, and I tend to agree, but would he be open to tightening up the regulations, as has been suggested?

Adam Afriyie: I will come to that point in general terms in a moment, but we are open to looking at the evidence of what may have changed since 2003 and 2004, when the legislation was brought in. Let us look at the trends in the numbers of injuries and complaints. If there is something to respond to, we will be open to responding with appropriate measures.

Tom Watson: Does the hon. Gentleman see any merit in regulations that would allow slightly quieter fireworks for domestic use, but louder fireworks for commercial display?

Adam Afriyie: A little boy was squeezing my hand at the last fireworks night and saying, Why don't they make fireworks a bit quieter? He likes the spectacle, but he was not sure about the crashing and banging, so I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman's point. We have different categories in place, but my personal preference would be to consider the noise nuisance a lot more than the light nuisance. We are happy to discuss the regulations, but we do not want to be killjoys or respond in a knee-jerk way by banning things that may carry some risk without looking closely at the evidence.
	In closing, let me say that I understand that this can be an emotive matter, especially when people's safety is at stake. In those circumstances, it is more important than ever that we adopt a calm, reasoned and scientific approach to our deliberations. We are only at the beginning of this debate, but I am pleased that it has been reasonably well conducted so far. As the shadow Minister for Science and Innovation, I believe that it is vital that we consider the matter carefully and on the basis of the available evidence. It would be irresponsible to make policy changes without looking at the evidence.
	We need to know whether the number of injuries is rising or falling. We need to know what the impact of awareness-raising campaigns is on the number of injuries. We need to know whether people are being injured at home or at the major events. We all have our instincts about that, but let us look at the figures. We also need to know the number of children and minors injured relative to the number of adults. That is just one stream of information that we need to look at.
	Information is power, but I have a complaint. The Government have put us in a difficult position. Bizarrely, they told officials to stop gathering the information on injuries in 2005. That was a very odd decision, and it is not good enough. Even the impact of the measures introduced in 2004 cannot be monitored adequately if the information is not available. I therefore have two requests for the Minister. First, will he make a commitment to start this year to count the number of injuries caused by fireworks? Secondly, will he give an unequivocal commitment that any changes to the regulations will be based on evidence, not merely assertion? This is not a debate with an ideological divide.

Michael Penning: Having been a fireman, I cannot believe that the Government stopped collecting the data, given that the safety of the public is the most important thing. Not only should those data be collected again, but they should include where the incident took place, whether at a public display, in a private residence or in the street. That information is crucial, so that we do not introduce unworkable legislation.

Adam Afriyie: The point is incredibly well put and I agree with it entirely. The statistics have been gathered since the mid-1970s, I think, and it could be argued that we should gather them in even greater detail, but to abandon collecting them altogether is a very odd move by a Government who say that they are interested in the outcomes of their policies.

Philip Hollobone: Perhaps I can help my hon. Friend out. In 2005, which was the last year in which the statistics were collected, the Government reported that 48 per cent. of firework-related injuries were sustained at family or private parties, that one quarter were sustained in the street or another public place where fireworks were banned and that half the victims were children, even though it was then illegal to sell fireworks to anyone under 18.

Adam Afriyie: I am glad that my hon. Friend has told the House the numbers. The question now is: what has been the impact of the regulatory changes in 2003 and 2004 on the number of injuries that we are concerned about? If the information is not collected, there will be no way for the House to make a sensible judgment on what may or may not need to happen next.

Tom Watson: The hon. Gentleman and I share an obsession with data, so will he confirm whether he is saying that he would bring back data collection, and if so, whether he has costed it?

Adam Afriyie: There is a cost to data collection, and we must ensure that it is not disproportionate. However, in this case, given firework safety, the antisocial aspects of fireworks and the impact on animal welfare, the figure would have to be pretty enormous to fail to justify merely recording the causes of an incident when somebody arrives at accident and emergency or wherever. I think that the data are already collected; we merely require an adjustment.

Michael Penning: Perhaps I can help my hon. Friend. In my other role, as a shadow Health Minister, I can tell him that those data are collected by A and E departments and minor injuries units. Transferring them across would simply be a matter of joined-up government.

Adam Afriyie: With the advent of modern technology-distributive processing, systems being able to interoperate with each other, cloud computing and virtualisation-such data transfers and interconnections are pretty easy to make. I am not sure that there would be an enormous or disproportionate cost to transmitting those data to the appropriate location. Doing so would certainly give hon. Members, who have a responsibility to consider the evidence in order to reach a judgment, the opportunity to do just that.
	There is not an ideological divide in this debate. Of course we all want safety and well-being for our families and our constituents. Of course we all want the antisocial behaviour that we witness in many of our constituencies to be brought under control. Let me finish by urging the Minister, first, to reinstate the collection of data or give us a good reason why he would not want to do so. Secondly, will he give a commitment that the regulations that he makes-or that he is considering or may consider making-will be based on the evidence? Finally, this is an emotive debate, so let me urge a calm and reasoned approach to it. I look forward to the rest of the debate.

Shona McIsaac: I am delighted to take part in this topical debate. When it was announced, I got out my heavily annotated copy of the Fireworks Bill, of which I was a co-sponsor, along with my colleague Bill Tynan. I also used to chair the all-party group that campaigned for the legislation. I hear what the Opposition said about being terribly calm, but one reason why that group was set up was to try to face down some of the opposition to introducing the changes that we needed to tackle the serious antisocial behaviour that was associated with each 5 November.
	Private Members' Bills are notorious for never getting on to the statute book. We had to use a lot of tactics to get the Bill through, which involved the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), who was also one of the Bill's co-sponsors, essentially having to sit on recalcitrant Opposition Back Benchers. The irony was that we set up the group to campaign on the issue shortly after my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) made one of the first attempts to bring in a private Member's Bill on the matter after the 1997 election, to which the Opposition also objected.
	Our aim was to try to get the legislation on to the statute book before the 400th anniversary of the gunpowder plot, and our very best chance came in 2002. Several members of the all-party group on fireworks were lucky enough to be drawn in the ballot for private Members' Bills, so we got together and said, Right. Each and every one of us will put forward a Bill on fireworks. We went, mob-handed, to see the Minister and said, If you don't accept the Bill introduced by Bill Tynan, who came second in the ballot, we will move on to Bill No. 5, then No. 7, No. 12 and No. 17. So the poor old Minister would have had to have spent every Friday dealing with debates on fireworks.
	I hope that that gives the debate a little background flavour of the tactics that we had to employ to get the changes that we wanted. I find it astonishing that anyone should suggest that the legislation went through terribly smoothly and without any opposition. In fact, the Second Reading debate was probably the most well-attended Second Reading debate of any private Member's Bill in that Session. Obviously, we again had to employ suitable tactics, so we ensured that we had well over 100 people in the Chamber at Prayers that day to show the opponents of the measures that we had the numbers to ensure that the Bill went through.

Philip Hollobone: Was it not a shame that the Government did not give some of their time to enable the legislation to go through rather more easily?

Shona McIsaac: This one had always been done as a private Member's Bill. I was chair of the all-party group on fireworks at that time, and one reason that we went mob-handed to lobby the Minister was that we felt that the Government were being a little slow on the uptake. Back in 1997 and 1998, there was a problem because of different types of fireworks starting to be sold, fireworks starting to be sold in the summer, and shops opening up specifically to sell fireworks for short periods. This was resulting in a big increase in noise nuisance and antisocial behaviour, and vets and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals were reporting more and more injuries to animals. We felt that the Government were being a little bit slow to catch up and respond to this increased nuisance.
	We managed, however, to get enough people to back the Bill, and there were well over 100 people in the House that day. They all wanted to take part in the debate, but again, we had to ensure that the Bill got through its Second Reading, so very few of them actually spoke. I want to pay tribute to the Members from across the House who supported the Bill. They included the hon. Members for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), for Angus (Mr. Weir) and for Uxbridge, as well as my hon. Friends the Members for Plymouth, Sutton, for Lanark and Hamilton, East (Mr. Hood), for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) and for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson). They also included Paul Tyler-now Lord Tyler-and Brian White, the former Member for Milton Keynes, North-East. Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale was our stalwart champion who ensured that the Bill got through the other place.
	I used to get hundreds of complaints about fireworks every year in my postbag and e-mails, but the number has now declined. There is not the same level of complaints about fireworks going off in August and September, for example.

Philip Hollobone: I am listening to the hon. Lady with great interest. The latest statistics from the national incident category list show that, in 2008-09, there were 45,112 incidents of the inappropriate use, sale or possession of fireworks, compared with 33,142 the previous year.

Shona McIsaac: I was simply saying that the number of complaints that I was getting in my postbag-about, for example, the use of fireworks throughout the year-had substantially diminished. However, when the Bill became an Act, and was implemented through various orders, it took some time for the processes to kick in, which might explain the statistical trend that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned.
	Last week, I met several members of the Fire Brigades Union when they were lobbying Members of Parliament in Westminster. They have known about my interest in this subject over a number of years, and they were telling me about their experiences. They said that the number of incidents involving fireworks that they had to deal with had declined. In our area, firefighters also have the power to remove inappropriate bonfires in public places, and they tell me that that has made a huge difference to the number of incidents that they had to deal with.

Michael Penning: rose-

Shona McIsaac: I think I know what the hon. Gentleman is going to say. I will give way to him in a few seconds.
	The members of the Fire Brigades Union also told me that the nature of the fireworks available now gave them great cause for concern, and I agree with them. This is where I differ from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. We are no longer talking about the Catherine wheels and the rockets in milk bottles that I remember from my childhood. Nowadays, fireworks come in huge, heavy cakes, as they are known. Yes, they have to be lit only once, but they are massive and completely inappropriate for domestic gardens. In our area, there are many small, terraced houses. The instructions on these cakes specify the distance that people are supposed to keep from them, yet they are being used in those settings. I am worried about the inappropriate use of these very large, modern fireworks.

Michael Penning: Actually, I was not going to mention multi-launchers, although I shall talk about them later if I catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was going to say that it is all well and good for the hon. Lady to say that the fire brigade has the power to remove bonfires-I have my Fire Brigades Union membership card, which I am very proud of, in my pocket-but firemen are not law enforcers. It is not their job to go and shut things down; they need the police with them to do that. It can often be very difficult for them when they are at an incident. We have had bricks thrown at us from the tops of tower blocks when we have been trying to put fires out. We have to remember that firemen are firemen, not enforcement officers.

Shona McIsaac: To be picky about this, firefighters deal with fire and safety. When I was discussing this with them, we also talked about attacks on members of the fire service when they were called out to incidents. Obviously, I can talk only about the area that they were serving, but they explained that many of the attacks around 5 November related to people building huge bonfires in the middle of housing estates. Those bonfires would be lit, and when the firefighters went to the incident, they would get bricks thrown at them. Some of those bonfires are piled high with pallets, tyres and so on. In recent years, however, the firefighters in my area have had the power to remove them-an ability that they see as part of their role in dealing with safety. They tell me that, since then, the level of antisocial behaviour towards them-having stones thrown at them, for example-has dropped.
	I want to make a few points to my hon. Friend the Minister, because, in spite of the progress that has been made, some concerns remain. One is about animals, and about guide dogs in particular. We need to consider the impact of the noise from fireworks on guide dogs. Guide Dogs for the Blind gave us phenomenal support for our private Member's Bill. It tells me that every year, some of its dogs and puppies are unable to continue working because of the noise from fireworks.
	I think we should do something about the noisiest fireworks; it is possible to manufacture fireworks that do not produce so much noise. How to tackle the problem of illegal sales is another issue that deeply worries me. I am told that there have been many more illegal sales since restrictions were brought in. Tracking where fireworks go when they come into the country-most are imported from China-is important. I would like to know more about what happens with firework imports, as not as many fireworks end up in shops as are brought into the country every year. Internet sales-an age-related issue-are another problem. It is not, of course, just a problem of fireworks, as for a whole range of age-related sales young people pretend to be at a suitable age so that they can buy certain products.
	I do hope that we can do something about these very large cake-type fireworks going off in small gardens. As I and others mentioned earlier, we might be able to look at how the labelling is worded. Rather than focusing on distance-I always think my garden is bigger than it actually is-and by saying that these fireworks are inappropriate for small domestic gardens, we could provide better guidance for dealing with the reality of modern fireworks.
	Thank you once again, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this debate. I think that hon. Members can tell that although we have had some changes, this remains an issue very close to my heart.

Lorely Burt: I am not personally a huge fan of fireworks, but I know that they bring great pleasure to millions of people in this country, especially children. It is a shame that the actions of a few can spoil the pleasure and, indeed, the quality of life of many, but I do not believe that banning fireworks would be justified. As well as depriving retailers of a valuable source of income, a ban might create a thriving, unregulated black market. Some people might even try to make their own fireworks, which would have disastrous consequences in many instances.
	As we have heard, the Government have introduced many regulations over the past few years, which have helped to strengthen the arm of the law in tackling antisocial behaviour. The police are now able to issue a fixed penalty notice on the spot and they can bring forward ASBOs and acceptable behaviour contracts in more extreme circumstances. No one under 18 can buy fireworks. Although the vast majority of retailers adhere to this regulation, fireworks can be bought on the internet, as the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) said, and no proof of age is required.

Michael Penning: Does the hon. Lady agree that it is ludicrous to be able to purchase fireworks over the internet? It presents safety issues during the transport of a product, which puts other people's lives at risk, especially those working in sorting offices, and we have no knowledge at all of who is buying the fireworks. If that is happening, the Minister should act now to stop it.

Lorely Burt: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's intervention. I had my researcher on the internet yesterday to find out just how easy it was to buy fireworks. It is extremely easy, so the Minister might like to look at that and deal with the issue in his response.
	Non-specialist retailers are able to sell fireworks only for a prescribed period. The Government's Firework Regulations 2004, built on the 1997 regulations, placed a curfew on the use of fireworks from 11 pm to 7 am in peacetime, from midnight on 5 November and from l am on new year's eve and for Diwali, the Chinese new year and other celebrations mentioned earlier in the debate.
	Anecdotally, I would say that the number of complaints I have received has diminished over the past few years. However, there are issues that the Government should tackle. Safety has been a big concern in the past. It is impossible to comment at the moment on how many people are injured because, as the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) said, the Government stopped collecting the statistics in 2005. That is not very helpful. We understand that the figure stabilised at around 1,000, but the then Department of Trade and Industry seems to have taken the view that it was unlikely to change either through safety awareness or further regulation.
	To buy category 4 fireworks, I understand that people need to say only that they are a professional firework display operator. No proof is required, and there is no requirement for a licence, although some of the worst accidents have taken place in events, involving thousands of people, that were stage-managed by unlicensed operators who, potentially, had carte blanche to cause mayhem. I would thus ask the Minister to consider introducing some professional licensing requirement for public firework display operators.
	My second main area of concern, which several hon. Members have already mentioned, is pets. I am not talking about acts of gratuitous cruelty, although they demean us as a society. I am not even talking about the 4,500 pets a year who wind up being treated by vets for injury. It is incumbent on responsible owners to keep pets inside during the firework season, although I acknowledge the point about unexpected fireworks going off outside the approved curfew time.
	What I am talking about is the noise factor, which can distress millions of pets at this time of year. I believe that the 120 dB limit is too high for many pets to tolerate and causes a disproportionate amount of suffering. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has run a campaign called Keep the noise down and it wants to see the limit reduced from 120 dB to 97 dB-a reduction that would have a marked impact, so I would be grateful if the Minister said whether the Government would at least look at that proposition.

Tom Watson: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for allowing me to intervene on noise reduction. I am trying to work out the position of all three parties on this subject. Is what the hon. Lady said a Lib Dem policy or is she just questioning the Minister?

Lorely Burt: I am questioning the Minister, asking him whether he would be prepared to look at the issue, which I hope answers the hon. Gentleman's question.
	Surely nobody wants a fun firework night at the expense of the suffering of dumb animals. As for the little boy mentioned by the hon. Member for Windsor, is not the real fun of fireworks the spectacular display rather than the loud clashing and banging?
	I wish everyone a sparkling bonfire night, including my constituents in Solihull, who are to be treated to a free firework display run by the Round Table a week on Saturday, which is particularly welcome at this time of recession.

Philip Hollobone: I am grateful to the Leader of the House for making the time available for this afternoon's debate. I cannot think of a more topical subject as we come up to bonfire night, so it was a wise choice. I congratulate all Front-Bench Members on their contributions.
	My position on behalf of my constituents is to call for a ban on the retail sale of fireworks. I do so after much consideration, much thought and much evidence from my constituents that that is what they would like to see. The local newspaper, the Kettering  Evening Telegraph has, over a number of years, run many stories on this issue. Two years ago, it polled some 800 readers by inviting their views on the subject, and 88 per cent. said that they felt that the time had come to ban the retail sale of fireworks altogether. Although we can never represent all the views of our constituents, I am confident that, in this case, I represent the majority view of my Kettering constituents.
	As the Minister said, it is appropriate that we are talking about this issue here in the Houses of Parliament. In 1605, Guy Fawkes tried to blow up Parliament, which is why we have bonfire night every year-to celebrate the foiling of what would have been a really major terrorist incident of its day.
	I like fireworks as much as anyone else. I think they are terrific. The colour, the sparkle, the noise and the spectacle are absolutely wonderful, and I love going to firework displays. The sad fact is, however, that in our country today, 1,000 people a year are hurt because of fireworks during the four or five weeks of the bonfire season. It is a disgrace that Her Majesty's Government stopped collecting statistics on firework-related matters in 2005. I hope that, at the very least, the Minister will tell us that he too is concerned, and that he will take steps in his Department and across Government to ensure that the issue of firework statistics is dealt with appropriately.
	In 2005-the last year in which statistics were collected-nearly half the injuries sustained as a result of fireworks were sustained at family or private parties, 25 per cent. were suffered in the street or in other public places where fireworks are banned, and half the victims were children, although it is illegal to sell fireworks to anyone under 18. Those are very serious statistics.

Shona McIsaac: It is true that it is illegal to sell fireworks to children, but it is at family parties that children are injured.

Philip Hollobone: The hon. Lady is spot on. That is why I want the retail sale of fireworks to be banned. Although injuries are occasionally sustained at well-organised public events-there was a very sad case in my constituency a few years ago-most are sustained in people's private homes and gardens.
	While people may organise private or family firework displays for the best of reasons, it is, in my view, impossible to hold such displays without being antisocial. Unless those people live in very remote properties, a great many others will hear the noise. If a family suddenly ramped up the stereo system and blared out music at 120 dB, there would rightly be plenty of complaints and legislation to deal with it, but it seems that when it comes to fireworks it is okay to make a lot of noise in crowded, built-up areas.

John Mason: I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman is going slightly too far by demanding a complete ban. When people let off fireworks on 5 November, does that not give a great deal of enjoyment to the wider community, especially people who live on their own and do not set off fireworks themselves?

Philip Hollobone: I respect and understand the hon. Gentleman's point of view. The point that I am making on behalf of my constituents is that the best way in which to celebrate the bonfire season-and other events, such as Diwali and the Chinese new year-is through organised, licensed displays, which minimise the health and safety issue and also provide an opportunity for charities to raise a lot of money. Although friends and families sometimes get together to hold joint firework parties, there are still plenty of risks of injury, and, sadly, the statistics tell us that many people are injured as a result.

Lorely Burt: The hon. Gentleman has already given us evidence of his mastery of the various statistics. He has told us that 50 per cent. of injuries are sustained at private parties. Can he tell us what percentage of people attend private parties as opposed to public events?

Philip Hollobone: I have absolutely no idea. It would be nice if the Government could tell us, and that is another reason why it would be good to collect the statistics.

Tom Watson: I am enjoying the rocket that the hon. Gentleman is giving all three Front Benches, but does he not think that a total ban would drive people to the unregulated black market, and that more unsafe fireworks would be available as a result?

Philip Hollobone: The hon. Gentleman has made a good point with which many Members will agree, but, although I share his concern, I do not think that that is a reason not to impose a ban. I believe that the vast majority of people who hold family or private firework parties are law-abiding citizens who would not want to organise an illegal fireworks display. I also believe that a ban would make policing much easier. If a police officer heard a firework being let off, finding the person who was committing that illegal act would be fairly straightforward.
	There are some stunning statistics. I read a very good article in this week's  Sunday Telegraph by Melanie Wright, who wrote:
	According to insurer esure, about 2.8 million people are planning to hold a bonfire party at home this year.
	I must tell the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) that I do not know how many of those people will also be attending organised displays, or how many people who do not hold bonfire parties at home will attend them, but that would certainly be an interesting statistic.
	According to the article,
	research from Churchill Home Insurance reveals almost two million British homes have been damaged as a result of fireworks going astray, with each incident costing an average of £307 to put right.
	It also gave another stunning statistic:
	Aviva claims data reveals that Bonfire Night is the worst day of the year for burglaries - they rise by over a quarter - as well as the worst day of the year for car theft - an increase of 25 per cent. compared to an average day.
	Members will be asking themselves why that is the case. One reason is that the police are having to spend so much time dealing with all the antisocial behaviour caused by the inappropriate use of fireworks on or around bonfire night that burglars and car thieves are taking the opportunity to go about their business.

Shona McIsaac: I was burgled at that time of year, although it happened a good few years ago. The police told me that crime peaks during that period because the noise masks many of the tell-tale signs. When rockets are being let off, people can smash windows and the neighbours will not hear. It is not that the police are necessarily elsewhere.

Philip Hollobone: It is probable that we are both right, and that both factors play a part.

Lorely Burt: I am sure that the fact that burglars and car thieves may not be wild about bonfire night does not contribute to the statistics. However, I am concerned about the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that the police should spend their time investigating whether people are holding their own little covert bonfire parties. Would that not be an equally inappropriate use of police time?

Philip Hollobone: It is not that the police are going around snooping on people holding private parties, because that is a legal activity. What concerns them is the inappropriate use of fireworks in public places. Inspector Dick Aistrop of Northamptonshire police has told me
	we build up our resources as bonfire night approaches and our BCU
	-basic command unit-
	prepares an operational response. We identify a 'Bronze' Commander (Inspector) to oversee those few days adjusting officer and PCSO duties towards the evening in order to respond to the increase in demand.
	There is evidence that the police are, quite rightly, adjusting their priorities to deal with the antisocial nuisance caused by fireworks around bonfire night.
	An excellent article recently in the  Press and Journal quoted Ally Birkett, the head of community safety at Grampian fire and rescue service, who said to local residents:
	We strongly recommend that you do not hold your own bonfire and fireworks party and that you attend an organised and stewarded event. Fireworks are explosives, not toys. If they are used inappropriately, they have the potential to cause severe injury or death.
	In that, he is spot on.

Jeremy Wright: My hon. Friend is making a very good case. Does he agree that one of the other problems in this country is the closeness in time between Halloween and 5 November? There has been an increase in trick or treating, and fireworks are being used in that activity. That is particularly distressing, especially for the elderly who are coming to fear this time of year for all the wrong reasons.

Philip Hollobone: As usual, and as on so many matters, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. The fireworks season is far too long. The prescribed period in the legislation is 15 October to 10 November. I would suggest that it is flexible on the boundaries and is too long. It should be redefined to 5 November or the nearest weekend. We seem to be able to do that with Remembrance Sunday, which we celebrate on the nearest weekend to 11 November. Why cannot we do the same for bonfire night? The added complication in our multicultural society is Diwali, which happens around the same time. In some of our more urban areas that is causing a problem as well. Again, if the retail sale of fireworks were banned, we would not have the problem. We would have licensed and organised events happening on or immediately around bonfire night itself.

Henry Bellingham: My hon. Friend is putting a persuasive case and will recall that, a couple of years ago, he and I took a petition to No. 10 that had been organised by my constituent Teresa Kulkarni, who has been campaigning tirelessly on the issue for many years. I entirely agree that having a shorter timespan for fireworks would make a lot of sense. Does he agree that putting the onus on retailers would make a lot of sense? If we had an initial voluntary scheme to prevent the sale of fireworks outside that period, we would not need legislation, on which we could fall back as a last resort.

Philip Hollobone: I am most grateful for that helpful intervention. I well remember the high-powered delegation that my hon. friend led to No. 10 to present the petition from Miss Kulkarni, which I think contained about 129,000 signatures and clearly represented a large body of opinion that would like action to be taken against fireworks. His constituent would go further than his modest proposal and although I respect his views on the need to tighten legislation, I would go further. If we are to be sensible and get to the nub of the problem, we need to ban the retail sale of fireworks altogether.
	The law, as tightened in 2004, is not having that much effect. From 2007-08 to 2008-09, the number of antisocial behaviour incidents recorded by police in England and Wales relating to the inappropriate use, sale, and possession of fireworks climbed from 33,142 to 45,112. The number of penalty notices for disorder issued for fireworks-related offences in the latest year for which figures are available, 2007, was a grand total of 816, compared with 33,000 incidents. In 2006, the number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates courts for offences relating to fireworks in England and Wales was 571. I would suggest that a very small number of people are being sanctioned for the inappropriate use of fireworks. The legislation is well intentioned but it is not having the necessary at street level.
	There is concern that we are not getting the information that the House needs. My local hospital has been extremely helpful in telling me that during November it sees on average 43 per cent. more attendances for burns than at other times of the year. I am also told that the hospital does not record specifically an A and E attendance as a result of fireworks, as it is not part of the nationally mandated data collection. It is the best estimate they can give me but it is not mandatory to collect the evidence.
	I asked my local fire and rescue service in Northamptonshire for its statistics. It was extremely helpful in telling me that there were about 81 recorded firework incidents for the first eight days of November in most years. But, again, it had to search through its data, using the word firework, as the information is not specifically collated. The local police inspector tells me that over the years 2006 to 2008, there were between 144 and 173 incidents of the inappropriate sale or use of fireworks under the antisocial behaviour legislation.
	There is no doubt at all that animals are severely distressed by the loud bangs caused by fireworks and about 4,500 animals are hurt each year by fireworks and treated for injury. It is not just domestic pets, but wildlife. The  Evening Telegraph in Kettering asked constituents to raise with me any questions they wanted me to put during the debate and there are several that I wanted to pose to the Minister. One reader suggested that housing association contracts should contain a clause to ban residents from using fireworks. That reader was particularly concerned about the use of fireworks in built-up areas. Another raised the animal welfare legislation and the liability of those who hold family or private firework displays for the harassment, alarm or injury caused to the pets of their neighbours. It would be helpful if the Minister clarified that.
	I am most grateful to the Government for holding the debate. It is an issue that will not go away. The evidence from my constituents and the limited statistical evidence we have from Government sources suggests to me, and I hope to the House, that the problem is getting worse, not better, and that the time will soon come when the Government of the day will need to consider a full ban on the retail sale of fireworks.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This debate must finish at 1.44 pm. Perhaps those hon. Members who are seeking to catch my eye could bear that in mind.

John Mason: I will do my best to be brief. We have had a useful speech on the history of fireworks from the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac), who is no longer in her place.
	I have a couple of personal examples to cite. An older constituent who lives on her own had a firework put through the letterbox of her house. Fortunately, she has a second door, the glass of which shattered. If that door had not been there, I do not know what would have happened. It was a frightening experience for her. Also, I came out of my office last year onto a fairly busy street and there were rockets going horizontally across the road at ground level. Clearly, we have a problem. In addition to parties and anniversaries, Glasgow also has an issue of fireworks when there is a football match and especially when one half of the Old Firm has beaten the other.
	I wanted specifically to mention animals and some of the effects that fireworks have on them. The SSPCA, the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, is running a campaign about this. Contrary to some public opinion, the RSPCA does not cover the whole of the UK. As I understand it, the RSPCA covers England and Wales and a completely separate body, the SSPCA, covers Scotland. I like animals-I am not unusual in that-and I hate to see pets and other animals being terrified by the kinds of noise we have to put up with sometimes. My lifestyle does not allow me to own a dog, but both my mother and my sister have them, and I have seen my mother's collie-cross shivering with terror at the noise that has been caused by fireworks.
	The SSPCA would certainly call for a reduction in the allowable level of firework noise. That currently stands at 120 dB, yet humans are advised to wear ear protection when exposed to noise above 80 dB. The noise of a typical pneumatic drill measures about 100 dB. We must also consider that a dog's hearing is twice as sensitive as a human's, and a cat's is three times as sensitive, so it is no surprise that animals are stressed. The SSPCA has cited the examples of a mare aborting her foal and another who delivered a stillborn foal following a fireworks display held 100 yards from the field.
	Two main issues should be addressed. First, I support early-day motion 1981, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen), and calls for the decibel level of fireworks to be reduced from 120 to 97; his party's spokesperson has already referred to that. Secondly, I agree with those who have argued that the availability of fireworks and the length of time for which they are permitted to be on sale should be controlled. As has been said, some improvements have been made, but the permitted time for sales, which runs from 15 October to 10 November, is still very long. One suggested limitation is for the period to begin about a week before 5 November-on about 29 October-and to stop on 5 November; I fail to see why there need to be sales after that date. Having more specific times governing the use of fireworks would help animal owners, including farmers and pet owners, as it would be easier for them to keep their animals inside for that given period. I am not calling for a complete ban, or a complete ban on sales to the public, but I think we could tighten the rules a bit.
	Finally, may I just pay tribute to Glasgow city council, which puts on excellent displays every year, and to council officials, and also to Clyde police and fire and rescue, who put great effort into enforcing the existing regulations?

Michael Penning: It is a pleasure to be able to take part in a debate that, for once, I know a fair bit about. I became enormously popular when I became a fireman in Essex; I was invited to so many displays and garden parties on and around fireworks night, because people appreciate how dangerous fireworks can be. Interestingly, I was usually the person who was offered the taper and invited to light the larger, more dangerous fireworks.
	The debate has been eminently sensible. If we were to take a poll of my former colleagues in the fire service, I do not think there is any doubt that the vast majority would opt for a ban on sales to the public, but I do not agree. I think we need laws that are enforceable-I shall refer later to the fact that many existing laws are not currently enforced and, indeed, are very difficult to enforce. I also want to talk about multi-launchers, which truly frighten a lot of people.
	The Minister said it was safer to have multi-launchers. As he suggested, they can carry from about 10 up to 200-plus fireworks. Multi-launchers are basically incendiary devices that throw explosives-usually Roman candles-into the air, and up to 150 feet for the smaller ones. The problem is that if they are not on a level stand and something knocks them, they cannot be stopped. Even a bucket of water will not stop them; they are designed to work in the wet so we do not lose fireworks night because of rain. I have seen what I call Herberts actually holding them against their chest and firing fireworks across a field. The danger in doing such things is obvious to everybody, but there are people who do things like that, sometimes due to alcohol or bravado in front of others. I have seen people firing fireworks down a high street, too.
	Does this mean, however, that we have to ban everybody's pleasure because a group of idiots want to play around with fireworks? I do not think so. Instead, I think that we need to look seriously at the legislation. We need to have the data available so that what we do is evidence based, instead of impulse based, as happens a lot of the time, with people referring to cases from Our correspondence. Our correspondence, however, tends to be motivated by individuals who have a particular feeling about something; but that is often not the general feeling of the entire constituency. We have all seen campaigns where a strong group of people have got together and loads of correspondence comes in, but when we look into it, we see that it represents a tiny minority within our constituencies.
	I agree that some of the fireworks that are still available in the shops should not be on sale to the public. We should look at how powerful these multi-launchers are and how many launchers they have, and most of them should be part of displays, not used in our back gardens. We also need to consider the role of retailers. They will say to us that they are doing their level best to check whether the purchasers are old enough-that same argument was used about alcohol sales and now is cited about cigarettes. Last week, the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Lincoln (Gillian Merron), said at the Dispatch Box that she could not impose legislation on proxy sale of cigarettes as it was unenforceable, even though we have that provision for alcohol.  [Interruption.] I agree with the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) that that is ludicrous, and so is this argument on fireworks. A huge amount of proxy sales are going on, when people who can prove they are over 18 buy fireworks in shops and then come out and either give them or sell them to minors. The police need to deal with that. If they say the law is unenforceable, we need to find a way of making sure it is enforceable. I believe it is enforceable, but the punishment must fit the crime. At present, it does not-an on-the-spot fine will not scare these people off. They are earning an awful lot of money by selling fireworks on at a premium to younger people.
	Perhaps I am naive, but I was also shocked to learn that fireworks can be sold by post. They can be purchased on the internet, and then they pass through our sorting offices to be delivered. I acknowledge that there is currently an issue with the sorting offices, but the people who work in them need to be protected. We could not send such quantities of explosives through the Royal Mail legally if they were not in the form of a firework. I hope the Minister will stand up and say he will work with his colleagues to make sure such sales are banned immediately.

Ian Lucas: As I understand it, it is illegal to send fireworks through the ordinary post. They have to be sent via specified special delivery.

Michael Penning: For clarification, what is special delivery? There is still somebody walking around delivering something that is likely to explode if compressed. Ignition from a spark is not necessary to make fireworks go off. They can be ignited in other ways, not least by compression.
	The point I am making is this: let us not spoil a wonderful tradition that we have had in this country for many years because a minority of people are abusing it. Let us encourage more displays. In my own constituency, I shall be at the Leverstock Green village association fireworks display as I am every year, where we raise money for the local community in a safe environment. Let us understand the pet problem, too. I fully agree on that. I have a dog that goes absolutely ballistic at home during fireworks night-very often we will make sure that we have the means to pacify him available at home-but, by the way, he goes mad when there is thunder and lightning, or when the postman comes, or when a million and one other things happen.

Shona McIsaac: rose-

Michael Penning: I will not give way, as I am short of time. We cannot eliminate the fact that there will be noise out there.
	I was at a public meeting in my constituency on Friday evening, where we were discussing the noise problem caused by traffic passing through one of my most beautiful hamlets on the edge of the Chilterns. The decibel levels there were 105. Therefore, some of the noise levels we are talking about in respect of fireworks are already present in everyday life in our constituencies. I do not think we can control thunder and lightning decibel levels. I would love to be able to control the traffic to get decibel levels down to about 85, which is what I think the legal limit is, but most urban traffic in London might well be above that, and it is certainly above that in parts of my constituency.
	I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) on convincing the Government to have this debate. Very unusually, I disagree with him on this subject, however. Sadly, I think we might end up in the legislative position that he proposes, but I think we should not destroy the great traditions of this great country of ours because of a minority. If we do that, we have lost the battle for the rights of the majority in the country.

Ian Lucas: With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall respond in general terms in the short time left available. Time will not permit me to respond to a number of specific queries that have been raised, but I shall contact the hon. Members who have taken part in this debate in writing on those issues.
	This debate has been extremely valuable, and I have learnt a great deal from the Members who have taken part, some of whom have a particular interest in this area. We all recognise that this is a very important issue for our constituents. I have heard, in particular, the issue raised about the collection of statistics-that is causing concern across the House. I am advised that the reason why they were not collected after 2005 was that for a long period the statistics had remained very stable and the same statistics were being recorded year after year. I have heard what the House has had to say on the matter, so I shall speak to officials in the Department about this issue.
	The approach that the Government took to the private Member's Bill in 2003 has led to progress. I believe that the position has improved, but that is not to say that it cannot be made better. This issue needs to be considered by the Government on a continuing basis. I have heard the representations made on the time frames and the dates specified in the regulations. The regulations, as they stand, have made a great deal of progress on the use of fireworks, and for the moment the Government consider them to be doing a good job. We continue to seek to improve the position, which we believe to be much improved, and we will continue to monitor and listen to representations that are made. I close by simply thanking hon. Members for taking part in a good-natured, informative and well-informed debate, and for their time.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House has considered the matter of fireworks safety.

Social Care Green Paper

Andy Burnham: I beg to move,
	That this House has considered the matter of the Social Care Green Paper.
	Today's debate is another welcome sign of the growing debate about the future of social care; it is a debate initiated by our Green Paper Shaping the Future of Care Together. I am pleased to say that already this has turned into one of the largest consultation exercises the Government have ever carried out: there have been more than 91,000 hits on the website-www.careandsupport.direct.gov.uk-and more than 17,500 consultation responses received, and 35 stakeholder events have been held across nine English regions, with two more scheduled. So there has already been an enormous level of engagement. That is appropriate, because there could not be more important issues for this House to consider than how we fund social care into the future and how we give all people in this country quality of life and dignity in retirement. After too long on the periphery, this issue is now centre stage. There is a building consensus that fundamental reform is needed soon if we are to secure a fairer deal for older and disabled people.

Kelvin Hopkins: Would my right hon. Friend say that the consultation has been genuinely open about all possibilities of funding care, including funding out of general taxation for everybody?

Andy Burnham: I would certainly say that it has been an open consultation and that we have not approached the matter with a fixed view about the future. The consultation put forward three broad options for the future funding of social care: the partnership option; the insurance option; and the comprehensive option. It ruled out the two other options at either end: wholly funding the system from taxation, and, in effect, leaving a free-for-all. Those options were ruled out because we do not believe it would be fair across the generations to ask the working age population to pay for the costs of care today. We believe-this is at the heart of this proposal-that, as was identified in all the King's Fund work, a partnership option involving the individual and the state is the right way to fund social care into the future. However, obviously that partnership can be constructed in different ways so as to achieve maximum fairness.

Paul Burstow: The fact that the Secretary of State is kicking off this debate is an indication of the importance that the Government attach to this subject, and we are grateful that he is here to do that. I attended a couple of the consultation events in my constituency, which were attended by providers of care, people receiving care and various other representatives of those with a stake in all this. Interestingly, at both those sessions the issue of taxation came through as something that people wanted to reinsert into the consultation. Will the results of the consultation accurately report those consultation events that actually vote for taxation to be considered?

Andy Burnham: I can certainly give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. Obviously we want the results of the consultation to be laid open, and I am grateful that he said he appreciated my presence in this debate. Since I took on this job, this issue has been at the top of my priority list. We urgently need to try to build a consensus in this country for the reform of social care. Of course we want all views to be heard as part of that, but there will come a point at which we have to try to find the compromise and consensus option that carries the greatest possibility of securing support in the country. That is the phase that will come after the Green Paper debate.

Ann Clwyd: Although I realise that the impact of this Green Paper mainly applies to England, parts of it also apply to Wales, particularly in respect of the benefits system. My constituency contains one of the highest percentages of disabled people in the country, and I have received an enormous number of letters from people who are particularly concerned about the withdrawal of disability living allowance and attendance allowance-they claim that that would have a great impact on their lives. Will my right hon. Friend give me some information on that, so that I may pass it on to my constituents?

Andy Burnham: I can tell my right hon. Friend that this Green Paper contains implications for the care system in Wales and for the benefits system there. I assure her that we are working closely with Edwina Hart and her colleagues to ensure that close co-operation takes place. On the question of benefits, I announced last week that we were ruling out DLA for people who are under 65 from the consideration and the modelling in the Green Paper, in order to provide the kind of reassurance that I think my right hon. Friend seeks. People may say, That was premature because the consultation hadn't ended. We just thought it was a sensible step to take to put people's minds at rest. We have done that, and I shall return to the theme of attendance allowance later in my remarks.

Hywel Williams: The Secretary of State just alluded to attendance allowance, which is the other concern of people in Wales. Can he confirm that no consultation specifically on attendance allowance was undertaken, either in Wales or in Scotland, even though the changes suggested in the Green Paper might have a substantial impact in both those countries?

Andy Burnham: It is important to remind the hon. Gentleman that it is a Green Paper on which we are consulting; we are hearing a range of views not only from England but from all around the country-we would, of course, hear representations made from Wales. It is important that people do not say we are not listening and not consulting; we are doing so. Obviously, we are talking to colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government and the Scottish Executive, and we will continue to do so. I recognise that the proposals have implications for policy elsewhere in the United Kingdom. It is important that we are sensitive to that and that we balance all views when we introduce our White Paper in the new year.

David Anderson: I just want to pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins). Can we be clear that the Secretary of State is not ruling out discussions on the type of model that has been proposed by my hon. Friend-a model that should be fully funded by tax or national insurance? Although that is not one of the options in the Green Paper, will the Secretary of State, as he said, be listening and not ruling it out? If he wants to rule it out, I will go home now and get the 2 o'clock train.

Andy Burnham: Far be it from me to prevent my hon. Friend from getting home this evening. In the Green Paper, we have put forward three options that we believe are the fairest way of funding care in the future. I was going to give some statistics on how the nature of our society will change in terms of the number of working age people in comparison with the number of people in retirement. Those statistics need to be borne in mind by my hon. Friend-I know that he will do so-in considering the fairest way to proceed. Obviously we have a system today whereby people are paying out large amounts to fund their care. They are already making a substantial personal contribution to the cost of their care. In my view, it would not be honest or straightforward to give the impression that we can fully fund a care system entirely from general taxation. We have ruled out that option, and my hon. Friend has good time to get up to King's Cross.

Jeremy Wright: I understand, of course, that a large part of this debate will be about how we pay for care. However, does the Secretary of State agree that it is equally important to talk about what we are paying for? I welcome entirely what the Green Paper says about standardised assessments. Multiple assessments are not only wasteful financially but extremely distressing. Will he also address commissioning in his speech, and whether or not we are commissioning the right things at the moment? It seems to me-he might agree-that there is far too much commissioning for tasks and far too little for good quality care overall. Does that not need to be a large part of this consultation?

Andy Burnham: I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. He tempts me back to the substance of my remarks. I do not want this debate to be conducted with a sense that it is simply about funding what we are doing already. We have to consider care and support in the context of reshaping services around the individual so that health and council staff work in a much more integrated fashion, supporting people at home and keeping them out of hospital. That is at the heart of the vision, and I shall come on to discuss it, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that commissioning is at the heart of it. Once we have explored the funding, we come to delivery and how best to achieve the kind of services that we want. This is about a vision for the future of social care, and I agree with him entirely.

Kelvin Hopkins: I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way again, and I want to address this funding matter again. I have spoken on many platforms, suggesting that care should be fully funded from taxation. I have not had a single person disagree with me; they all think that would be the sensible and fair way to do it, just as with the national health service.

Andy Burnham: The crucial issue is whether my hon. Friend has spoken to all people across all ages and whether he has spoken to a representative sample of the whole population. The idea might be more appealing to older people, who might find it an attractive option, but less appealing to people in their 20s and 30s who are struggling to get on to the property ladder. We have to take a view across the entire population and to consider what will be fair to all generations and sustainable in the long term. That is the consensus that we are struggling to find. If my hon. Friends want to make strong representations to me about reconsidering this matter, we will listen. However, I think the King's Fund was right to say that the best chance of finding consensus rests in the notion of partnership between the state and the individual.
	The Big Care Debate, which began a national conversation about social care, ends on 13 November and I urge Members on both sides of the House to make one last push in their constituencies to encourage people to contribute and send in their views.
	Only a few days ago, we were reminded why this debate is so important. The recent population projections from the Office for National Statistics tell the story of how quickly Britain is ageing. By 2033, the ONS suggests that the number of people aged 85 will rise from 1.3 million to 3.3 million, while the ratio of working age adults to pensioners-the so-called dependency ratio-will drop below three. Parallel to that, improvements in medical treatment are extending the lives of those with disabilities or long-term conditions. That all points to the exchanges that we were just having about the affordability of any system in the long term and, in particular, the ratio of working age people to those in retirement.

Angela Browning: In the context of the figures that the Secretary of State has just announced, when he considers the results of the consultation will he pay particular attention to the fact that as the population gets older, and given that older people have a higher level of dependency, so, within families, do their carers? Increasingly, pensioners are looking after even older pensioners who are their dependants. He cannot ignore that, because the strain on older people in a caring role is very great.

Andy Burnham: The hon. Lady makes an intelligent and important point. That is the nature of how the world is changing. People in their 60s and 70s have caring responsibilities, which place considerable stress and strain on them. My parents' generation is perhaps the first generation to have seen that and to have had caring responsibilities for children, grandchildren and, at the same time, parents. That places very considerable pressure on some people. As I was saying to the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) a moment ago, any system needs to rethink how we provide care and support so that it helps people to cope with that pressure by providing support when they need it, when it is most valuable to them, and so that it makes the life of being a carer more tolerable than it is today. This does not mean replacing or sidelining the role of carers; the only way that the system we are talking about would work would be if we did a better job of helping people cope than we are doing today. That would be crucial in helping us to face the demographic challenges of the future.

Paul Burstow: Earlier this year, the Government announced a very welcome injection of £150 million for carers over two years. In a debate that we had earlier this year about carers, I asked the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Corby (Phil Hope), how we could track that money. He quite rightly urged me to go back to my constituency and ask those questions. I did and I finally received a letter yesterday-three months later-to tell me how the money was being allocated. I was told that because the money was being allocated through general growth, specific plans had not been drawn up to spend it on caring activities. My concern is that the £100 million that comes next year will go the same way-it will just be rolled into general spending and will not particularly benefit carers. What can be done to ensure that it gets to carers?

Andy Burnham: We are issuing guidance on how to commission appropriate services for carers, but I recognise the issue that the hon. Gentleman is raising. The Princess Royal Trust has done some good work on that issue. There is a balance to be struck. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches have sat there and lectured us many times about being too top-down, on ring-fencing too much and on target-setting too much. They say we are taking away local discretion and how disgraceful that is, but then the hon. Gentleman says that if we allow too much local discretion, local bodies do not do what we want. There is a balance to be struck. The Government allocated this money because of the importance of the issue, but I stress to the hon. Gentleman that although I and the Minister responsible for care services, the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Phil Hope), have a responsibility to ensure that our objectives are met, it is the responsibility of Members of Parliament to challenge primary care trusts if they are not commissioning services in the expected way.
	I was speaking a moment ago about people living longer, particularly those with disabilities and long-term conditions. The life expectancy of people with Down's syndrome is just one illustration of that. Just after the war, a child with Down's rarely survived into adulthood. Today, it is possible for them to live well into their 60s and, with the right support, to enjoy a full and rewarding life. What a wonderful sign of health and human progress that is, yet the sense of a world transformed brings into sharp focus the challenge ahead for social care.
	It has been remarked, quite fairly, that if William Beveridge had sat down today to develop the welfare state he would have put social care at the centre rather than the periphery of his plans. More than 60 years after the birth of the NHS, it is worth reflecting that the same unfairness that originally drove Nye Bevan still exists in social care today, and it is this: people with the greatest needs are paying the most; the services that a person receives vary markedly according to geography; and what an individual spends on their care is only loosely linked to their ability to pay for that care.
	Hon. Members will appreciate that the spectrum of care costs is extremely wide. About one fifth of people can expect to need care costing less than £1,000; for another fifth, the cost will be in excess of £50,000; and, for a smaller but growing proportion with very high needs, particularly those who develop dementia, the cost can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. That is a cruel lottery, and the fact that people born after the war, the first real property-owning generation, will soon enter the care system only intensifies the need for change. We could see unfairness played out on a far greater scale over the next 20 or 30 years if we do not make changes to the care system today.
	It is therefore no exaggeration to say that the Government's Green Paper Shaping the Future of Care Together is a Beveridge moment for social care. It is a chance to rebuild the social care system from first principles and to raise our ambitions for care and support in the future. One of the main messages that I should like to communicate today is this: in the time that this Parliament has left, one collective responsibility is to build an unstoppable momentum for legislation on social care in the next Parliament.

Kelvin Hopkins: Does my right hon. Friend agree that at the heart of the Beveridge plan was the principle of universality? It was also at the heart of national health service planning. However, what my right hon. Friend talks about is not universal.

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend should study the Green Paper, which talks about the creation of a national care service that will include universal entitlements to assessment, reablement and other services. People will be entitled to have some of their care needs met.
	Social care was outside that original consensus, and for that reason has always been a partnership involving the individual, the family, the community and the state-all of them playing a role in the provision of support. Care has always been provided on that basis, but the purpose of this exercise is to ask, Can we find a fairer way that spreads the costs and the risks across us all and is a collective system that provides more peace of mind for us all?

Jeremy Wright: The right hon. Gentleman mentioned that the issue will effectively be a problem for the next Parliament. Regrettably, it has come before this Parliament at its end rather than its beginning, but we are where we are. He mentioned dementia, and he knows that that is growing as fast as, if not faster than, the other problems that he has described. He knows, too, that people with dementia are among those who are particularly affected by the mismatch between the quality of the services they receive and the amount of money they pay to receive them. One reason is the lack of training for those who provide dementia care. May I commend to him the report of the all-party dementia group, which I know his colleague, the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Corby (Phil Hope), has seen? I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will include it in the Government's thinking on the improvement of social care more generally.

Andy Burnham: I know that the hon. Gentleman chairs the all-party dementia group, and my hon. Friend the care services Minister has just informed me of the valuable work that it does. I must correct what the hon. Gentleman said at the start of his intervention, however. It is not as though we have done nothing, to be fair. The Department of Health has produced a dementia strategy, which has been widely welcomed. Indeed, its preparation drew on a range of voices and outside organisations, and it is an important piece of work. There has been all the work with individual budgets, too.
	However, I have said in many speeches-I am owning up here-that politicians have for too long flinched from the debate, because it raises difficult and awkward questions about funding. I am signalling very clearly that that cannot continue, and we have to make care an issue on which the parties lay out their different options. It should feature prominently at the next election, and the expectation should be that if we can agree on one thing it should be this-that we create an unstoppable momentum for legislation in the next Parliament.
	On the history of the issue, I note that the royal commission, which the Government set up in 1998, could not find a consensus, but I am clear that we cannot proceed with reforms unless we find a broad consensus across the country. Such is their reach and their importance to us all that we could not implement them with 51 per cent. support for one option and 49 per cent. against, based on the options that my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) has pushed towards me. Whatever the option, we would have to implement it with a broader sense of fairness and consensus. That is what we are trying to find, but the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth makes a very valuable point, and we take such issues very seriously.
	We have to seize the moment; otherwise we face a bleak future in which inadequate budgets are stretched ever more thinly around an ageing population, providing in the process less and less dignity and a worse quality of life in retirement. It is not a very encouraging prospect; in fact, it is very depressing, and that is why we need to act.
	The Government's proposal for a new national care service to sit alongside the national health service is the right and radical answer to the mounting unfairness. Under the national care service, people would have the reassurance of a universal system, the security to plan for the future and the knowledge that they would not need to sell their home if they required high levels of care.
	There would be a new standardised assessment to end postcode lotteries in the current system, and free information and advice would be available to all, helping people to navigate the system when they are most in need of a helping hand. The national care service would be anchored in prevention and early intervention, with care services working far more closely with the NHS to ensure that people received the integrated support they needed. In particular, reablement-intensive support, helping people to recover after illness or bereavement-would be at the heart of all options.

Paul Burstow: Will the Secretary of State address an omission from the Green Paper? It is very important that he does so if we are to understand the direction of travel. The omission is means tests on, and thresholds for, the assets that a person would be able to hold before they accessed state support. The Green Paper is silent on that and on whether the Government think that additional new resources would be needed to achieve an improvement in care quality. Will the Government spell out those points in their White Paper?

Andy Burnham: They would obviously have to be spelt out. The Green Paper's approach was to consult on principles, providing not all the details of how we would construct the options, but the principles that fit most closely with the consensus in the country. Under each option, we could apply a more progressive approach, whereby those with more would pay more, or a flat fee and universal approach, whereby everybody paid the same. The Green Paper touches on those questions, and in the consultation we want to draw them out. We have an open mind on those questions.
	The current threshold of about £23,000 is a crude cut-off point, and we can do better to give people more peace of mind in retirement. That is what we are working towards, but the question about the extent to which any new system should involve means-testing is difficult. It is not a popular subject among older people, and we need to test people's sense of fairness on building a system with either means-testing or a more universal approach at its heart. We are open-minded on that question, as we are on all questions in the Green Paper.
	However, one area in which we have indicated that we will go further is the provision of free personal care for those with the greatest needs. The long-term aim of a 21st century care system should be more people living full and independent lives in their own homes for as long as possible. In that respect, the Prime Minister's landmark announcement of free personal care for those with the highest needs is an important staging post for the type of care service that we want to build. It is an opportunity to start to address the unfairness in the system here and now, and to do so in a way that listens to people's fundamental desire to remain independent and in control of their lives for as long as possible. For me, that does not mean creating new incentives to put people into residential care. In my view, it is no solution to say to people that the only way to protect their home is to go into a home.
	I am disappointed that the shadow Secretary of State for Health is not here today, either because he felt it was not important enough or could not find the time. Had he been here, I would have wanted to question him closely on how promoting a scheme that provides help only if individuals go into residential care can possibly hold an answer to the future care needs of this country. Surely the future is about helping people to stay in their own homes for as long as possible and giving them access to the support that makes that possible, not having a system that creates an incentive to put people into residential care. That is a depressing view of the future and an inadequate and flawed response to the challenges that the country faces. Though I welcome the Conservatives' engagement in the debate, at long last, I am disappointed that the shadow Secretary of State is not here to speak up and begin to try to explain how the plans that he has put forward could possibly answer the country's needs.

Kelvin Hopkins: At this moment, people feel pressurised into keeping their relatives at home because they fear losing what may be a relatively small amount of equity to some people, but is a lot to them-and the only equity in the family-if they lose granny's house having been forced to use it to pay for granny's care. That is what is happening. I have come across cases in my constituency of people who are deliberately keeping at home unwell relatives who would be better off in residential care.

Andy Burnham: I certainly recognise the problem that my hon. Friend describes. That is why reform of the system is growing ever more urgent. There has been a fundamental shift. My parents' generation are the first major property-owning generation. In the past, people in my constituency, a former mining area, did not own their properties, but today they do. People in their 60s and 70s have bought their homes and now have an asset that they own. They may not have a lot in savings or other assets, but they do own a home. It is important that we create options for the future that are not just about residential care. This is about how to help people, and the people who care for them, by enabling them to enjoy and stay in their own home, and if necessary to pass that home on to the next generation. That is at the heart of the entire Green Paper, which is about doing it better than we are doing it today.

David Anderson: I share my right hon. Friend's unhappiness that the shadow Secretary of State is not here. Does my right hon. Friend have any idea how much of the £8,000 that was proposed to be put forward as a donation by anyone going into residential care would be kept by the private insurance company?

Andy Burnham: That is why it is disappointing that the shadow Secretary of State is not here. We cannot see how a system that requires an £8,000 contribution to care can possibly be workable, on any basis. Indeed, on the eve of the Conservative party conference the  Daily Mail had a front-page headline saying £8,000 to save your home. Two days later, a spokesman for the shadow Health Secretary was saying that top-ups might be required. The £8,000 figure lasted all of two or three days, yet during the big care debates people have been using it as though it would be the extent of the contribution that would have to be made. We cannot conduct the debate in those terms. People have to be open and honest about the scale of the costs, not put out misleading figures for political purposes that then fall to bits in their hands, and think that they are adding to the debate.

Nigel Dodds: This issue clearly affects all parts of the United Kingdom and serious issues arise in relation to older folk: we have heard about them being kept in their own homes by their family and I have experience of that happening in my constituency. Many families talk about this problem and want to know when it is likely to be resolved. Can the Secretary of State tell us when there is likely to be an indication of the way forward? In other words, how long are we going to have to wait, because these are pressing and urgent matters?

Andy Burnham: That is why I have put them at the very top of my list of priorities. There is nothing more important than building, first, momentum, and then consensus around reform of the system. I agree that people need to see how this will play out. I have said-I cannot say more than this-that we will have a White Paper before this Parliament is dissolved, and we will then take a proposal to the country on reform of the system. I want to create an unstoppable momentum whereby there will be legislation in the next Parliament. Obviously, I cannot promise that, as it depends on many different things. However, we should, collectively, make it our mission to ensure that the next Parliament legislates on social care.  [ Interruption. ] In answer to the hon. Member for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson), we are coming forward with a clear vision of the future-ideas to put on the table. The Labour party created the national health service, and now it has a very clear idea about the social care system. I think that people will look to us for ideas because of our history and what we have done in providing better support for people. The hon. Gentleman is chucking jibes over here, but where are his proposals on how he will make life fairer for older people in this country? Where is his shadow Secretary of State, for that matter?
	Our vision for the future is about bringing more support into people's homes-not putting people into homes, but giving them more support, using new technology to the full. The answers are out there already. Many Members will be able to call to mind examples from their own constituencies involving telecare and other technologies, helping people stay in their homes for longer, and personal budgets opening doors and extending choice for individuals and their family. A progressive system of care and support should open up options for people, not close them, and that means embracing new ways of thinking about care.
	We must also create a system that empowers and enables carers to cope. The biggest challenge to carers is not the inflexibility of employers but the inflexibility of services. Their contribution must remain the bedrock of any future system of care and support. We must continue the journey started by the carers strategy to ensure the provision of care services is shaped around their lives rather than the other way round, in the same way that child care and early-years support was built to help people to balance family commitments with work commitments. In other words, just as Sure Start supports the child while helping parents to return to work, the national care service can achieve the same end by helping and empowering the individual and the family receiving support.
	Let me move on to funding. The Green Paper sets out three clear options and gives the indicative cost that an individual would pay to fund the care service. In addition, we are exploring a number of options to pay for the portion of basic care costs that the state would pay for as part of our proposals. Let me reiterate that we have ruled out any suggestion that disability living allowance for under-65s will be brought into the national care service. There may be a case for bringing together elements of some disability benefits, such as attendance allowance, with social care funding. However, that will be done in a way that guarantees that people receiving these benefits at the time of reform would continue to receive an equivalent level of support and protection under the new care service scheme.

John Mason: May I ask the Secretary of State what that equivalent level of support will be? Will people get care instead of money? If so, does that not go against what is happening in the Welfare Reform Bill, in which we are trying to give people more money so that they can spend it on the care that they want?

Andy Burnham: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We want to place at the heart of the system the control and empowerment that comes from the personal budgets scheme, in many ways replicating the power and control that comes from direct benefits. People will want to look at the details and decide whether that desire has been translated into any new system, and the test of whatever comes out of the Green Paper will be whether it replicates that direct individual empowerment.

Mark Harper: The Secretary of State rules out touching the disability living allowance of those under 65 and that is welcome, but he will know that nearly 1 million people over 65 get DLA. His announcement at the conference last week will not have put their minds at rest. Will he say more about whether DLA for those over 65 is covered in the Green Paper proposals?

Andy Burnham: It is important to make the point that the Green Paper is not about taking away from people. The whole proposal is to do things better for such people. The fact that they are receiving that benefit means that they need significant support, and the whole thrust of what we are trying to do is improving the support that we can offer.
	We have to live in the real world, and in the current financial climate, we cannot talk about creating a new system of care and support simply by saying that everything should come through taxation. That would not be a sustainable position for the public finances. Equally, it is not sustainable to say that if we are to build a fairer and higher-quality system of care and support, we should not consider the support that we already provide, such as the attendance allowance. The House has flinched from this debate for too long because it raises difficult questions, but if we do that again, we will let down disabled and older people.

Hywel Williams: The hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) made a significant point about DLA for over-65s, which is paid specifically for mobility needs. Some of those people have capital commitments with regard to those needs, for instance to Motability, which cause them many problems. I appreciate that this is a Green Paper, but we need to make the Secretary of State aware of the complexities that might arise.

Andy Burnham: I take the hon. Gentleman's point, and he will have to test what comes after the Green Paper for such people, whose needs are considerable and who deserve the best support that the state can provide. I am talking about enhancing how we look after those people and doing more for them than we currently can. It is understandable that talk of change is unsettling for people, but I hope that he will help us relay to them the message that underpins everything we are trying to do, which is that this is about significantly improving how we provide care and support, not about cutting things, taking them away or leaving people without the support that they need.

Kelvin Hopkins: What is affordable and what is not affordable is a political choice. I have spoken to many people and explained that improvements might cost, say, 1p on the standard rate of income tax. Everybody has said, Hooray, we would certainly pay that. People want them to be paid for out of taxation, but my right hon. Friend has made the political choice that they will not be.

Andy Burnham: My hon. Friend must think about not just the here and now but what the country will look like in 2050. The modellers and forecasters predict that by then, there will be two working-age people for every retired person. Today, that ratio is roughly 4:1. Is he certain that payment through taxation is sustainable and fair in the long term? The question of fairness needs to be tested over the long term, and I do not believe it is fair always to go to the working-age population. People expect to pay something towards their care costs, but it is not fair for them to have to pay out catastrophic levels of cost simply because they are struck down by a cruel condition such as Alzheimer's. We are seeking to end that unfairness, but any system has to be realistic and credible if it is to make progress.
	I mentioned attendance allowance and the importance of people receiving an equivalent level of support. We must recognise that by strengthening the care service that we provide, we will not only save lives but save money and strengthen communities. Early Department of Health research indicates that a council can save £1 million a year through investment in reablement, about the same from telecare and more by developing alternatives to residential care.
	It is apparent that if we can nip problems in the bud-for instance, by giving an older person the support necessary to stop repeat hospital admissions-we can also save money for the NHS. If we reflect on the fact that falls cost the NHS £1.8 billion, there is a significant invest to gain argument for better care and support.
	That leads me to another important point. Today's debate must go beyond the architecture of local care services or the funding proposals that underpin them. Fundamentally, the challenge that we are discussing today is part of a wider shift-a drive to build a society for all ages, creating an environment and a culture that supports and empowers older and disabled people in all aspects of their lives, at whatever stage.
	In social care, a lot of work is under way to break down assumptions that people of a certain age need a certain kind of support. The Putting People First agenda- and with it the £500 million investment that has gone into personalisation-is helping move councils away from the slippers and sympathy default position towards a system that treats people as individuals and works with them to find the right answer to their care needs. The growth in personal budgets is extremely significant in that regard, and something that I want at the heart of the national care service.
	Despite that progress, however, there is still an undercurrent of ageism across public services-a continued tendency to read the age rather than see the person. That must change as this country's demographics change. That is why we have pledged to eradicate ageism in the years ahead, and why I think that it is important that the ban on age discrimination in the Equality Bill will apply to health and social care at the same time as to other sectors-in 2012.
	The door is still open for discussion about the finer detail of the national care service, and that goes for my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North, too. Those listening to the debate will have heard his strength of feeling about the matter. The Green Paper consultation will continue until next month, and the Government are still listening to people's feedback and ideas before developing a White Paper next year.
	The Minister of State has done a superb job in speaking up for social care and carers and in taking the debate forward. He deserves great credit for his work. He and I want to use today's debate to draw out further thoughts from Members of all parties to contribute to the building debate about the future of social care.
	I therefore return to the point with which I started. We need to find a clear consensus in the House and a commitment to bold and radical action. If we cannot, we face the depressing prospect of not being able to fulfil the standards to which we aspire for our parents and for ourselves in our later years. We must find a better and fairer way of spreading the risk and funding care in future. I believe that a national care service, built on the principles of fairness and universality, will best serve our ageing society for the future. I hope that we can have a good discussion today on that proposal so that we lay the ground for legislation in the next Parliament.

Stephen O'Brien: First, may I give a couple of apologies as a courtesy to the House? The shadow Secretary of State is obviously sorry that he is unable to be here to reply to the debate. It has been well known for at least several days that he is in Washington on a visit to fulfil a long-standing commitment to talk to various parties and interests in the United States about health care reform, at their invitation. It is interesting that we were notified formally of the Secretary of State's presence in the debate only yesterday. When I wrote my letter to the Speaker's Office last week, it was to be the Minister with responsibility for care services and I who would debate the matter. The Secretary of State's cheap shot therefore ill befits his office. After the debate, I hope that he will question his private office to find out why he was not informed about the courtesy that was shown last week. It is sad that he raised the matter on the Floor of the House.
	Secondly, I am sadly unable to stay for the whole debate. Again, as I wrote to Mr. Speaker last week, I have to be in Stoke-on-Trent by 7 pm for a commitment that has long been in the diary and for which many people have sacrificed their time. I wish to do my best not to let them down. Mr. Speaker kindly agreed that that was wholly appropriate. Most important, and demonstrating our joined-up approach, my hon. Friend the shadow Minister for disabled people will take my place on the Front Bench for the conclusion of the debate.
	Before we delve into the detail of the Green Paper, I shall remind the House of the debate's context. We are faced with the challenge of an ageing population, whose needs will stretch our social care services to the limit if they remain unreformed. In the next 20 years, the number of over-65s will nearly double, and the number aged over 100 will quadruple. The rise of dementia-the issue was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright), who is chairman of the all-party dementia group-will be especially apparent in the older population.
	Help the Aged and Age Concern estimate that 2.4 million older people in England have care needs, and 45,000 older people are forced to sell their homes each year because of the rising cost of care fees. Indeed, the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) made that point.
	However, not only the elderly depend on social services. Those with learning disabilities such as autism, the blind or partially sighted, and the physically disabled members of our society all have needs that are met through social care. Those who care for the disabled and the elderly also derive a great deal of support from the social services. Carers UK estimates that there are 4.3 million carers in the UK, with one in five carers having to give up work to care. It was disappointing that the Green Paper somewhat pushed those groups into the background of social care reform.

Sarah Teather: The hon. Gentleman is making a point that I wanted to make, and the same point has been made by my local Mencap organisation. The Green Paper does not acknowledge that as well as the likely increase in the number of elderly people, the numbers of the people with learning disabilities is likely to increase because of increased survival rates. The Green Paper does not recognise that or have any answers on funding.

Stephen O'Brien: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point, because it was a disappointment that that broad area was not covered in the Green Paper. The Secretary of State referred to the Down's syndrome example, so to some degree he covered it in his remarks, but the hon. Lady is right to highlight that absence from the Green Paper, which was the point that I was making. Mencap and many others have been anxious about whether that is a signal of an absence of commitment in the area, given that most people are focusing on the elderly- [ Interruption. ] From a sedentary position, the Minister responsible for care services, the hon. Member for Corby (Phil Hope), is trying to suggest that that is nonsense, but he may have overlooked the fact that I was replying to an intervention from a Liberal Democrat and that I had not actually accused the Government of anything. He should be a little less touchy and a bit less sensitive about his personal reputation, when what we need is some kind of solution for what is a very pressing problem for many people, across all age ranges in society.
	It is clear that a growing number of people in our population interact with the social services in some way, shape or form. I hope that the Secretary of State agrees that our thinking on the issue must be underpinned by the acknowledgment that social care has the power either to make or to break the lives of the most vulnerable in our society.
	The Secretary of State asserts, a little presumptuously, in the introduction to the Green Paper that
	this is the beginning of a Big Care Debate.
	The Prime Minister calls for a major debate in his foreword, despite having issued a similar call a year and a half ago in his speech to the King's Fund, when he said that
	we must now look again at the options for reforming our current system of care and support.
	It is therefore perhaps important to remind the Government that the debate has in fact been going on for more than a decade. Tony Blair made-as it turned out-the empty promise to reform the social care system as far back as 1997, when he pledged that older people would not have to sell their homes to pay for their care. I am sure that that is written in stone in the Department of Health and the Secretary of State's office.

David Anderson: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the debate has been going on for much more than a decade? For the two decades before this party came into power, his party dismantled social care, promoted private care and cut billions of pounds from the care budget.

Stephen O'Brien: Rather than getting into a ding-dong dispute about that, I shall just say that I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's underlying point that there were cuts to the budget. However, I accept that there was a shift in approach. Many people were moved out of institutionalised care, particularly elderly people. Often, inappropriate presumptions about mental health problems were made and mental health problems were not properly diagnosed, and there was a move towards care in the community.
	There are many arguments on that and it is fair to say, in the light of experience, that to some degree the pendulum went too far, and we are now trying to find a new balance. There is a difference between wanting to preserve people's independence and dignity and their ability to remain in their own homes with a certain quality of life, and wanting to preserve and maintain the dignity and appropriate care of those who on proper criteria need long-term residential care, particularly as they move towards the end of their lives.

Bob Spink: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the assessment of continuing care needs funding is a real problem for people who leave hospital and go into residential care, for instance following a stroke? The Government really need to put out stronger advice and guidance for health authorities to ensure that people's health needs are funded.

Stephen O'Brien: The hon. Gentleman makes a point about health needs, and some 30,000 people are under NHS continuing care, which is of course provided. The difficulty is the assessment criteria and the absence, at the moment, of a sufficient number of intermediate and rehabilitation places, which are especially useful for those who need continuing care, whether in the national health system or as they move across into the social services care system, which is of course differently funded and has different consequences. Above all, if we had sufficient places, it would help to remove to some degree the crisis and emergency aspect that characterises so much of the problem as people try to find an available bed rather than a place in a care home-if appropriate under proper assessment criteria-that is suitable to the person's needs.
	The elderly, and all those in need of care, are unlikely to be fooled by any Government who claim that they are setting the agenda on this issue. Indeed, the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson) made the point that this is an issue that has been under discussion for decades. Promising a big care debate may sound good, but what people are really looking for is decisive action. As I will outline, my party has made some important decisions, and I hope that it will be recognised that it is the Government-who have issued a Green Paper-who need to be pressed to make decisions, rather than having yet another consultation on a consultation. However, I do not deny that a consultation is indeed taking place.
	As for the proposal for a national care service, the Government appear to have plucked the term out of thin air to give the appearance of weight to the Green Paper which might otherwise be absent, because it is so void of practical detail. It is clear that by creating the illusion of a national care service, the Secretary of State-as one might expect-wants to have his cake and eat it. The Government talk of a national care service, but they want personal budgets for individuals and funding autonomy for local authorities, as the Secretary of State confirmed a moment ago. The Government talk of service, but fail to specify exactly what kind of service the public will get for the uncosted £3.5 billion a year commitment. Most worryingly, the Government talk of care, but threaten to cut attendance allowance and DLA for the over-65s, which would deliver a stinging blow to the most vulnerable in our society.
	The Green Paper proposals would be more believable if they were locally costed and specific. Instead, the Green Paper waxes lyrical about options for reform without giving the country the road map it so desperately needs. Given that the need for joined-up care services was drummed home no fewer than 40 times in the Green Paper, it is extraordinary that the Government have not felt the need to demonstrate a joined-up approach in their own proposals. Instead, what we have witnessed over the past two months is a quick succession of U-turns and botched announcements.
	First, we had the surprise pledge from the Prime Minister himself in his conference speech about the provision of free personal care for those with the highest needs living at home. It is as yet unclear how that proposal relates to the Green Paper or where the money to provide that care will come from. The Prime Minister has specified a sizeable commitment of £670 million a year to provide 350,000 people with the highest needs with free home care, and the Secretary of State described that a few moments ago as a staging post. But his Ministers were unable to answer our inquiry about which budgets that money would be taken from and how the figure of 350,000 individuals had been reached, as recorded in  Hansard at column 809W on 13 October 2009.
	Can the Secretary of State clarify the connection between the announcement by the Prime Minister and the Green Paper, and can he offer any further insight into the funding of the Prime Minister's pledge? There are still no details of the Prime Minister's policy on the Department's website. That, in itself, is of some interest, because any of us who take an interest in such care issues will have been struck by the Secretary of State's effusive response to the Green Paper, compared with the somewhat taciturn reaction to the Prime Minister's home care scheme. No one, however, has been remotely forthcoming about the numbers behind the scheme, leaving everybody questioning where the money will come from.
	Given the Secretary of State's exchanges with the hon. Member for Luton, North, who is no longer in his place, it is a little odd, and inconsistent, that the Prime Minister's scheme is to be funded-so it is claimed-through general taxation. However, the Secretary of State said that it is not possible in such areas to consider general taxation as an option for what has been proposed under the scope of the Green Paper. That inconsistency needs to be clarified and explained.
	The Secretary of State seemed to take his cue from the Prime Minister's new-found spontaneity last week. The former announced out of the blue that, rather than dissolving the disability living allowance into local authority budgets, as the Green Paper had implied, he would keep the DLA. That was in spite of the statement made early last week in the other place by the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the noble Lord McKenzie of Luton. He said that the Government were looking at all disability benefits for dissolution into the national care service.
	Will the Secretary of State clarify whether the attendance allowance will stay or go? He did not do so when he was on his feet a few moments ago. This point is exercising many people in all parts of the country, and not just in England.

Angela Browning: Is my hon. Friend as concerned as I am about another benefit-in addition to the ones that he has mentioned-on which I have received requests from constituents: quite an old benefit called the severe disablement allowance, which is still recognised? It is usually a lifelong benefit for people with lifelong learning disabilities. Is that, too, on the table?

Stephen O'Brien: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend, because that could impact greatly on those in receipt of the benefit. We require clarity because we are dealing with people who have arranged their lives completely, having often struggled to have their needs recognised, and who now need to know that that level of support will not be removed. We need clarification, therefore, on the attendance allowance and certainly on the SDA.
	If the Secretary of State has decided to axe those-he sought to suggest that there would be an underpinning guarantee, but again he did not specify how it would be put in place-what measure does he intend to take to protect the care of those most dependent on the allowance? His U-turn on the disability living allowance has come as a welcome relief-I do not deny it-to many with disabilities. It was much needed because there really was distress. It also came as a welcome relief to their carers and advocates. However, the Government continue to keep people over 65 in the dark about whether their DLA will be under threat and whether the attendance allowance remains under threat.
	If the Secretary of State wishes to offer an explanation, I will be more than happy to take an intervention. Otherwise, it must be taken that there is no guarantee that the DLA will remain for those over 65. His decision to discard some of the benefits is bafflingly contradictory. He claims that he wants to give more responsibility to individuals through personal budgets, and yet he takes this responsibility away again by threatening to cut disability benefits. How can we move towards a more personalised care agenda if he is not prepared to trust individuals with benefits designed to offer more choice and control over the services that they receive? That is fundamental to how we need to move forward.
	To be clear, I say officially, as it were, from this Dispatch Box that we have said that we will oppose any plan to cut and redistribute attendance allowance, because in our view it is not the way forward. Unlike the Government, who are trying to create the impression of a national approach to social care, by nationalising it in effect, we believe that personalisation is the right path to take. Attendance allowance is one way for people to commission informal care services. If we were to back the Government's approach, more and more of those informal care arrangements would have to be made formal through local authorities. That would be costly and restrictive for those at the receiving end of care. Although we will continue to examine the evidence, a retreat back to the state as the sole provider might restrict the flow of funding into front-line care. In a society where individuals are often the experts in their own care needs, that would surely be a step backwards.
	On top of those concerns about disability benefits, older people continue to worry about whether they will have to sell their homes to pay for their long-term care. That is a feature that Tony Blair himself mentioned in a promise in 1997-a promise that has not been delivered under this Government. Instead, the Green Paper revealed a loose preference for a partnership model for social care, whereby the state would pay for a set proportion of each individual's care fees. It is worth mentioning that the partnership model was discussed in detail in the 2006 review by Derek Wanless-a review that the Government refused to commission and which has been on the table for debate for more than three years. It is only now that the Government have chosen to explore its implications.
	I have some concerns about the Government's proposals for a partnership model of care. First, the Green Paper states that
	everyone who qualified for care and support from the state would be entitled to have a set proportion-for example, a quarter or a third-of their basic care and support costs paid for by the state.
	However, there is no guidance on how individuals qualify for that subsidy and no firm pledge to provide a specific proportion of funding. In their answer to our parliamentary questions on the issue, the Government could confirm only that there would be no new money involved and that
	Costs would be met from within the public spending envelope set for future spending reviews.-[ Official Report, 12 October 2009; Vol. 497, c. 758W.]
	How can we trust the Government to deliver on reform when they leave the public playing guessing games about the funding of their proposals?
	By the Government's own admission, older people want security, dignity and independence for as long as possible. Everyone wants to be able to plan and save for their own care needs, but at present the public stand no chance of being able to anticipate whether they will be able to afford the cost of care. The Government have let our elderly down through their lack of detail. The other serious question hanging over the Government's proposal is their failure to deal with the accommodation and food costs of long-term care. Those hidden costs often prove to be the most crippling for older people, as they move from their own homes to a residential setting.

Andy Burnham: The hon. Gentleman accuses us of a lack of detail, but let me put a direct question to him. Does he still stand by the £8,000 figure that he and his colleagues put forward on the eve of the Conservative party conference?

Stephen O'Brien: I am coming to that in detail. I am sure that the Secretary of State will be pleased to hear my clarification of an absolutely superb policy that is now being much welcomed by those who care to understand it, in contrast to the rather disappointing tribal political ping-pong with which he tried to de-dignify his speech earlier.
	It is enough for older people to make the transition to long-term care without having to worry that their most basic needs, such as food and accommodation, may not be taken into account when they undergo a means test.
	The Secretary of State has tempted me to move straight on to the next part of my speech. Whereas the Government's Green Paper offers no firm guarantee that every individual will be able to access care in old age, the Conservatives have already placed a large and, I would argue, innovative brick in the wall of social care reform. Our home protection scheme will enable older people to keep their homes and guarantee their care in older age. Our policy will deliver on the promise that Tony Blair made, but failed to keep, more than 11 years ago. We are looking to build on that policy by rigorously examining the options for domiciliary care, so that older people can preserve their independence for as long as possible.
	Despite what the Secretary of State said, picking up on some of the rather less informed comment from when the scheme was put forward, let me make it clear that there will be no perverse incentive or adverse selection, because access to residential care via a local authority will be based on assessments of need alone. We will ensure that, as well as ensuring consistency, by putting in place proper national assessment criteria, so the point about perverse incentives is simply not valid.

David Anderson: Surely that is what happens now. People are assessed for need by the local authority, but when they need to go in to a care home they refuse to, because they do not want to. When the scheme is introduced, there will be an incentive for people to go in to care because they will keep their homes, so if they are assessed for need, they will go in.

Stephen O'Brien: The hon. Gentleman seems to misunderstand that we all agree across the House that, above all other things, older people want to maintain their independence, dignity and so forth as best they can. There are no people sitting out there thinking, I must rush into a residential care home. It is only when the need requires it that it happens, although the local authority might have no incentive to meet that need because of capacity issues.

Andy Burnham: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Stephen O'Brien: I would like to move on. I think that I am about to answer the Secretary of State's question, which I can anticipate, because his questions have so far only been about somebody else's brief.

Andy Burnham: The hon. Gentleman just said that there was consensus that people want to keep their independence and stay in their own homes. My understanding is that his proposal would offer no additional help to people to do that, so how can he stand there and make that statement? The only support would go to people who moved into residential care.

Stephen O'Brien: I was right. The right hon. Gentleman is trying to read out the criticisms that those who are rather embarrassed that they have not been able to attack our proposal successfully are now trying to peddle. The truth is that I am about to come to that very point.
	Let me just make sure that the home protection scheme is understood. The whole point is that it is part of the overall approach to care, which has to include domiciliary care, which is not addressed by the right hon. Gentleman's own proposals. The firm guarantee is that our home protection scheme would offer every person the chance to protect their assets and guarantee their care through the option of an one-off payment of around £8,000. All care fees would then be waived for life, should the individual ever need long-term residential care. Unlike the Government's partnership model, this single lump sum, paid for at the age of 65, would cover not only care but food and lodging.
	The scheme would also be self-financing, an important factor to consider, given the public deficit. The Government might be refusing to be up front about the funding of their partnership model, but the Conservatives are giving careful thought to the ways in which we can both steward the public finances and deliver long-term care to those who need it. The Government's own insurance model would be priced at £20,000-an unrealistic saving goal for the individual-compared with our £8,000 option, which has been verified by a leading actuarial firm and welcomed by Aviva and the Association of British Insurers. If the Secretary of State wants to study the quotes from the ABI, which has looked at this proposal extensively, I would be more than happy to pass them over to him.

Paul Burstow: I just want to make sure that I fully understand the proposal that the hon. Gentleman is setting out before the House today. Did he use the term domiciliary care in the context of the package that he is proposing? In other words, will domiciliary care be covered by the scheme? If not, how will it be covered? Do the Conservatives have a plan for that?

Stephen O'Brien: If the hon. Gentleman will be patient for a second, he will hear about that. This proposal does not cover domiciliary care. This is to address the Government's failure-

Paul Burstow: Precisely: it does not cover domiciliary care.

Stephen O'Brien: It does not cover domiciliary care. It covers the Government's failure to honour the promise given by Tony Blair as part of his attempt to get elected in 1997. People are fearful about having to sell their homes when they have to go into residential care, and that is what we have at last addressed.
	Let me get on to the other point, which is obviously important, and let me make sure that this is fully understood. The Government's partnership model would require every person who believed that they were in need of care to undergo a means test. Our approach is open to everyone, regardless of their financial circumstances. State-funded care would still be available to those on low incomes, but the majority of people who do not qualify for state-funded care would have the option of guaranteeing that their residential care needs would be met at an affordable cost. At present, all the costs of elderly residential care must be met by the individual if they own just £23,000 or more in assets, including the value of their home. Our home protection scheme would enable everyone to access affordable care.
	The affordability of our scheme is based on the principle of sharing the risks together. We want to encourage the public to begin to pool their risk of entering long-term care, so that the cost of care for those who need it is lowered. I note that the Secretary of State has now disappeared; he obviously does not like my answer. An analysis of data from the NHS Information Centre suggests that one in seven people will eventually enter long-term care. The Personal Social Services Research Unit has made a series of projections regarding the future cost of care from the current figure of £26,000. An analysis of these data, carried out in consultation with the King's Fund and with actuarial experts, has led us to the premium price of around £8,000.
	It is highly unusual, wholly welcome and totally transparent for an Opposition party to lay out a proposal in such detail, and those who have scrutinised it have clearly been unable to pick holes in it. This demonstrates that we have imaginatively addressed a problem that the Government, led by a Prime Minister who never delivered on his 1997 promise, have signally failed to address. That failure has resulted in people with more than £23,000 of assets remaining fearful that they would have to sell everything in order to pay for the residential care that they need.
	As has already been said in the debate, when it comes to care, we realise that we need to fight the cause before we reach the crisis. Prevention is always better than costly cure. The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow), who is just leaving the Chamber, raised the point, so he might have waited for the answer. Everything must be people-focused.

Sarah Teather: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Stephen O'Brien: I am answering the intervention by the hon. Lady's hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam, who has chosen to leave the Chamber at the very moment the answer is being given.
	Public health has been neglected under this Government: budgets have been raided and specialist staff have been cut, so they cannot begin to talk of joined-up health and social care services until they view public health as a priority. Under a Conservative Government, a new priority will be given to public health reform. There will be a Secretary of State for public health, and local directors of public health with the power to allocate independent ring-fenced-I emphasise ring-fenced-budgets to make effective interventions across the health, local government and social housing sectors to promote independent living for elderly people.
	While the Government want to standardise care through their national care service, we want to personalise it. We have our sights set on two areas of technology where local directors of public health will be able to use public health budgets to deliver support systems to enable people to live independently in their own homes and reduce the need for costly, complex interventions.
	Telecare is the key to giving patients and families the peace of mind to maintain an independent lifestyle. It provides them with a technology-based system of local monitoring, which identifies risk and monitors need without the use of costly or intrusive observation. A telecare scheme in north-west Surrey showed that this sort of preventive technology could reduce the number of people entering residential care by 11 per cent. in a single year. In Scotland, a new programme provided to 7,900 older people last year achieved savings of £11 million and significant improvements in self-reported quality of life for both elderly people and carers. For too many elderly people in too many areas, these services are not on offer.

Sarah Teather: I am struck by the hon. Gentleman's comments and my reading of a section of the Green Paper reminds me of some important issues raised by a local Age Concern group in my constituency. It pointed out that prevention is not just about the practical issues, as it is often about emotional support. That is what allows people to live independently. Depression is often unreported in elderly people. Day care services, visiting services and listening ears, with people making face-to-face visits, are just as important as the really practical things.

Stephen O'Brien: I could not agree more with the hon. Lady. Any of us familiar with these issues in our own families are fully aware that the contact of counsellors or other people of good will-perhaps those with some professional abilities not just to be good listeners, but advisers who can hold people's hands through the labyrinthine process of accessing their necessary support and care needs-is just as vital for the mental and emotional stability of elderly people. I understand absolutely the views expressed by that local group and those requirements must be met as part of the domiciliary care package.
	That is why, in addition to the telecare that I mentioned, we need to look at home adaptations, which allow people's living environments to be tailored to their care needs so that injuries are prevented and people can stay in their homes for longer. Around half of people over 80 have a fall at least once a year, many occurring in the home. Many of those falls are easily preventable with the right home adaptations in place.
	The final important group to consider is carers. Despite the vital work they do in caring for relatives and friends, our carers have suffered from serious neglect. Last year, the Prime Minister himself pledged £150 million for the carers strategy, with £50 million to be disbursed this financial year, mainly to support respite care. Only two weeks ago, as the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam mentioned, the Princess Royal Trust for Carers reported that up to £40 million of it has gone missing-soaked up in local primary care trust bureaucracy. The Secretary of State's answer is that we MPs should press our PCTs on that, as it is not for him to impose from the top. When central money is being used to spur action, it is vital to know where that money has gone and to have some means to account for it.
	The Green Paper makes little mention of carers' needs or the problems of the funding system, so it is time for a change of approach. In his very first statement of Conservative aims and values in a document called Built to Last, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), the Leader of the Opposition, committed to better rights to flexible working and respite care for carers. Again, it is a matter of giving people more independence and freedom over their use of social services so that we as a country and the Government in office provide public services that are responsive to people's needs and preferences rather than just a system.
	We know that local authority investment in home adaptation primarily benefits the NHS through reduced hospital admission costs and benefits individuals by providing security in the home. We know that NHS investment in telecare benefits local authorities by reducing their domiciliary care costs and enables individuals to have greater involvement in their care. We also want to know why these projects are not being more widely encouraged and promoted. The Commission for Social Care Inspection's final report found that innovative solutions such as joint council-NHS commissioning and the use of personal budgeting were still the
	exception rather than the norm.
	We will require PCTs to promote joint working with local authorities, which will mean budget-pooling and joint commissioning. When the prize is independence, security and dignity for our elderly population and peace of mind for relatives, the bureaucratic barriers that stand in the way must be removed. That would also help to deliver on the quality agenda mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth in an intervention.
	These are the final questions that the Secretary of State must answer. What action will the Government take in response to the consultation that ends on 13 November? When will we see a decisive and realistic route forward? When will the White Paper be published, other than just before the next general election, which must take place by June next year? May we have a specific date? The Green Paper alludes to the creation of another quango, an independent organisation to advise the Government on the provision of care and support. How would that organisation be funded, and what exactly would its role be? When will the action plan to examine developments in the social care work force be published?
	Above all-we have often said that this would be very welcome-when will the Government, rather than engaging in what is often rather disappointing ping-pong across the Dispatch Box and elsewhere, invite any Member of the Opposition to go into their office and talk to them, even if it has to be on private terms, as an earnest of the attempts that they say they are making to build a consensus? So far no such invitation has been offered, although we have made clear that we are open to discussion on what kind of consensus might be built. Given that that has worked to a degree in the pensions arena, there is no reason why it should not work in the social care arena, but it takes a willing Government to cease to be tribal and try to build a genuine consensus.
	The question facing the public is a simple one. Can the Government be trusted to deliver social care reform that is so desperately needed? The answer is also simple. The Government's threatened actions will threaten the most vulnerable, whereas we will oppose any measures to cut attendance allowance. Their inaction on residential care will loosen the grip of every older person on his or her assets and home, which is a real fear for such people. Our home protection scheme and our plan for home adaptations will offer older people security and certainty in old age. The Government's uncosted proposals place an unprecedented burden on our public finances, whereas we will confront the issues of funding head on. They have chosen to prolong the status quo, whereas we will choose the necessary change.
	I hope that the Government will realise that consensus would be better than this, but until they invite us in, we must continue to make our arguments and make them strongly.

Malcolm Wicks: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker, not least because of your long-standing experience, interest and indeed work in this area.
	I want to present a brief analysis of why the issue that we are debating is so vital to us, and why it is so vital for us to crack it in an appropriate way, in the next Parliament at the latest. I also want to make some comments on the proposals in the Green Paper, which I hope Ministers will accept as constructive criticism.
	The issue of what we now call social care-whether it involves younger people with disabilities of various kinds or suffering from mental ill health, including schizophrenia, or, as is more common, the care of frail elderly people-is one of those issues in politics which are a matter much more for people's agendas and family discussions than for what we often call the political class. It is far more important than Governments and Parliaments have given it credit for over the past 20 years. Within the extended families of which we are so well aware, there will be extensive discussions and great concern about, for instance, what will happen to a person with Down's syndrome when she is no longer a child but is becoming an adult. More typically, there may be concern about someone with dementia, perhaps Alzheimer's, when residential care looms. There may be serious problems involving mental ill health, often affecting remarkably young men, and I mentioned schizophrenia earlier. It is about time that Parliament and Government got a grip on the issue because people out there are concerned about it and are impatient for action. Within that, the financing of long-term care is most obviously the unfinished business of the post-war welfare state. We need to sort this out in the next Parliament.
	Much has been said about the ageing of our population. Reflecting on this for the first time in a few years, given other interests that I have been pursuing, I think that there are three trends in terms of the ageing population, not just two. One is the ageing of the whole population. We can cite the ratios between those of working age and those who are retired and we have known about them for a long time. We have also known for a long time about the second phenomenon, namely the ageing of the elderly population. It is not so much an issue about those in their 60s or 70s; they may well be an issue for the pensions debate. But more people are living into their late 70s and 80s, which is why this is a crucial area for health and social care.
	In 2008 almost 2.8 million were people aged 80 or over. By 2018, it will be 3.5 million. By 2033, according to Office for National Statistics estimates, it could be as many as 5.7 million people, which will be about 8 per cent. of the population.
	There is also a third trend that we should note: the ageing of the very elderly population. Far more people will now live into their 90s and far more will get the equivalent of the Queen's telegram-given the demography, it could be from the Queen herself-in 10 or 20 years' time. In 2008 there were 97,000 people aged over 95. By 2033-not so far away-there could be 464,000 people over the age of 95, representing about a fivefold increase during that relatively brief period.
	We need to think carefully about the so what? question. What are the implications? I have always thought that we should not immediately get into a debate about frailty, health care and social care when we speak about demography. We should applaud the fact that we now live in a society in which people will have a decent lifespan. I remember my professor at the LSE, the great Richard Titmuss, writing an essay about why we thought of the problem of ageing. The problem, he thought, was when people died in infancy or before they could retire. There is an ageism in society that we need to confront and there is a paradox: as our population grows more elderly, ageism becomes more rife. We need to confront that ism.
	However, we must acknowledge a grim reality- the correlation, although it is not an inevitable one, between disabilities and illnesses of different kinds and an ageing society. There are different indicators in terms of different conditions and different levels of mental and physical disability. Let me give one indicator in relation to dementia. Research from the Alzheimer's Society, of which I have the pleasure to be a vice-president, shows that there are 700,000 people with dementia in the UK today. Of those, 62 per cent. are thought to have Alzheimer's disease itself but, given the figures I have mentioned and the growing numbers of elderly people, the society estimates that by 2021 the total number with dementia in the UK could be 940,000, or almost 1 million people. The number could rise again to 1.7 million by 2051, and that is one of the reasons why we need to pursue the science and research on Alzheimer's: to see whether, with this illness, as with so many others, the scientific and medical communities can start to make an impact. However, that one indicator shows the seriousness of the issue we are talking about today.
	The figures I have just cited mean that in all of our constituencies there will be many hundreds of our citizens with dementias of different kinds. The Alzheimer's Society estimate for my constituency is that some 900 people are suffering from dementia. For those who reach the age of 80 or over, there is a one in five risk of dementia. That illustrates the scale of the problem. That level of risk raises issues in respect of how we insure against this, and gets us into the debate about the financial options, which I will come on to shortly.
	There are huge implications for all of us in the demography and the epidemiology of some of these issues. There are certainly huge implications for social policy and public spending. I doubt whether we can seek to constrain public spending in this area over the next five or 10 years; if we are to match the scale of the need, it obviously has to be increased. There are also huge implications for families and extended families, and particularly for those husbands and wives or partners, sons and daughters and all the rest of the family and friends and neighbours who become what we now refer to as the carers.
	The Green Paper is an important document, and the fact that the Secretary of State is here sends a signal about the seriousness of the issue it addresses, because, regardless of what it says on the plaque in Whitehall, he is actually the head of a Department of health and social care. That is the reality. For too long, the care bit has been merely one division, although an important one, of a great Department. It is often the big health issues-sometimes crises-that take up all the attention. I am therefore pleased that the Secretary of State is giving so much attention to this other area. My comments are offered in the spirit of constructive criticism, and I am sure that he and his Ministers will take them in that way-although they have not heard them all yet.
	The Green Paper makes some important comments on entitlement. It acknowledges a truth that is universally observed by us: there are great variations across the country, from local authority to local authority, in the provision of care. As it says, that is not good enough. We need to move towards a greater system of universal entitlement, so that if people move-as they often do when they are frail-they will not find in the new area a totally different system from the one they were used to. I say that because people do not like the idea of a postcode lottery. In some of our debates on these kinds of topics there is a fashion for localism. I am not against localism in terms of innovation, trying out different things and responding to particular local needs, but in this sphere we need to blend the concept of localism with that of national entitlement.
	The Green Paper contains some interesting proposals on assessment. Page 10 states:
	You will only need to have one assessment of your needs to gain access to a whole range of care and support services.
	I welcome that, and I ask the Minister who will respond to the debate to say more about it. How broadly might that assessment range? When I was Minister with responsibility for pensions, based in the building in which the Minister lives and works-I suspect he lives there for a lot of the time, and he certainly works there-we were developing and rolling out the new Pension Service, including, importantly, the local pension service that performs so many domiciliary visits and assessments of not just the obvious things, such as pension credit issues, but energy efficiency programmes and so on. I do not want to push this too far because people need expertise to conduct assessments in the field of social care, but has the Minister been in talks with the Pension Service and the Minister with responsibility for pensions to see whether there could be a more joined-up approach to these assessments? One of the problems in this field is that once the welfare state is introduced into the life of someone with great frailty, there can simply be too many assessments, so could he say more about that?

Hywel Williams: The principle behind the assessments for attendance allowance and disability living allowance is self-assessment, in that the applicant fills in the form. Presumably, any new system would require the involvement of some professional help, so there might be a difference in principle in any new system.

Malcolm Wicks: That is an interesting and difficult point. When people can simply provide information by themselves or with the help of a relative, through a computer, that is often convenient, but a fellow human being will often be needed to assess a situation properly. The Minister will doubtless be able to respond to that point when he addresses my related point.
	My second point deals with effective care in the community-or home support. I shall discuss residential care in a moment. We all know-we have touched on this in the discussion about assessments-that we need to address issues associated with housing, which are so crucial in effective community care, with social service support, with health support and with other forms of support. As something of a student of these things, I noticed that the Green Paper says that we need more joined-up working. We all put our hands up to agree with that. It states:
	One way of doing this is through better joined-up working between health, housing and social care services and between social care and the disability benefits system.
	It continues rather boldly by stating:
	Services will be fully joined up between the NHS and the new National Care Service.
	The following paragraph states:
	This does not necessarily need to involve structural change.
	I do not believe that it does, but will the Minister say more about that?
	I suppose that I am trying to put the Minister on the spot, but I do so seriously. If I had had time, Madam Deputy Speaker-you will be aware of some of this documentation-I would have been able to find similar phrases in important state documents about health and social care going back at least 30 years. I would probably find such statements even in the White Paper on growing old produced by a previous Conservative Government. I know, as a student of this subject and from my ministerial experience, that it is one thing for the civil service to draft such fine prose and for Ministers to recite it-I have done that myself-but it is very difficult to make it happen in practice. This is the old story about the lever being pulled in Whitehall and sometimes our assuming that things are happening in the locality when that is not necessarily true.
	There is now lots of super practice of joined-up work, particularly between the health and social services, on which to draw. However, I wish briefly to detail my experience as an Education Minister, when my Government introduced the Connexions service. I remember talking to my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Phil Hope)-he is a Minister now, but he was a Back Bencher then-about that. I waxed lyrical about the importance of the Connexions service for young people and about how we were going to overcome barriers and join up agencies. Did that happen in the field? Sometimes it did, but often it did not. I challenge the Minister, in a friendly way, to prove to me that his fine prose is not just the usual fine prose and that the Department has serious ideas on how its approach will work in future.

Mark Harper: I share the right hon. Gentleman's scepticism about how easy it is to join things up. I do not know how much thought he has given to this, but does he think that one way of doing that might be through the personalisation agenda? The Government are in favour of that and my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) spoke about it forcefully. It is one option, whereby we would make more of the money from different funding sources-from different Departments-go into the hands of the individuals, and those individuals would then spend it. That might be the most successful way to join up effectively the services that they receive and the outcomes they obtain.

Malcolm Wicks: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that that is one way through this. We could use empowerment, by giving more of a say-more of the budget-to the individual herself or himself. Another way through would be to be more radical about trying to pool budgets across agencies. Some such pooling goes on in health and social care. I think that the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, has recently spoken about that happening at a more macro-level, and it is an interesting idea. In other words, instead of public spending simply relating to the Whitehall furniture or the local furniture of Departments and so on, we say, Here is a larger sum of money than we provide at the moment to crack this problem. We need to experiment with that in the future as we enter difficult times with public expenditure in a range of areas. I want the Minister to comment on this. The issue about joined-up working, which an earlier Labour Government called the joint approach to social policy-everyone has had a go at trying to make it work-is that achieving it is like finding the holy grail. It is very difficult but well worth the effort.
	My third point is about carers. We have all acknowledged their importance. There are nearly 5 million to 6 million of them, some caring, I am almost tempted to say, too much. Some are caring almost around the clock-and some for more than 50 hours-until sometimes they drop because the fatigue and stress are too much. I want gently to say to the Ministers that I think the provisions in the Green Paper on the treatment of carers are a bit feeble. It looks to me a bit like they have been added on-when I was a civil servant in the Home Office many years ago, somebody referred to it as joining up with a staple, although I think that there are now electronic ways of joining up a document. I was disappointed that carers were not more central to the analysis. I know that the Government have done a great deal on carers-more than any other Government-and that there has been a recent statement on the issue, but I would like to have seen the subject more central to the analysis, because the choices about how to provide care and the difficult decisions about residential care are ones that the carer and the wider family have to take as well as the cared-for person.
	I am not sure whether the Green Paper mentioned carer's assessments at all-if it did, forgive me, but they certainly were not central to it. I speak with a vested interest as the promoter under a Conservative Government of a private Member's Bill that became the Carers (Recognition and Services) Act 1995-the first Act, with all-party support, to enable the carer to have her or his own needs assessed. That is important and we should have heard something about it in the Green Paper.
	On carers, may I also pick up another important issue that is mentioned? Perhaps increasingly-and certainly numerically-lots of carers are workers and employees. We have heard how they might also be parents or grandparents. That all adds to the busyness of the life of the British carer. The Government have done a lot in terms of what some people might call the work-life balance-or the employment-care balance-and I urge the Department of Health to push at that door. There will always be at least one other Department, which I know quite well, that will resist that, urged on by certain business interests, but we need to recognise that a modern economy and a modern society have to allow for the fact that people have a dual role as workers or parents of young children while also caring for elderly parents. Some 3 million people combine work and care and I am advised by the statisticians that that is some 12 per cent. of our work force. It is no mean issue.
	Finally, I want to talk about the most difficult issue, which is the financing of long-term care. I have referred to it, not terribly originally-others have called it this-as the obvious unfinished business of the modern welfare state. We had a royal commission some 10 years ago, and a minority report was produced. It was an interesting document, but, to be blunt, the Government then parked it in the too difficult box. I am pleased that these Ministers are returning to it-[Hon. Members: Or going.] I see that the Secretary of State is leaving-it is not that difficult an issue. However, I know that Secretaries of State have many things in their crowded diaries. Government and Parliament may have found the issue too difficult, but avoiding it actually left the people needing care and the carers themselves facing difficulties. Some of that care is difficult, and some of the issues that those people face are difficult, but unlike Parliaments and Governments, they have not been able to avoid them for 10 years.
	On the Green Paper's analysis of financing long-term care, my assessment is, two cheers for the Green Paper. It advances the debate, and one option could see us through into the future. However, I must echo what one or two colleagues from all parts of the House have said. As a  Daily Mail columnist might ask, Why, oh why have you rejected what you call the taxation option? I simply do not understand. Although I would not advocate a taxation option, I would look seriously at the pros and, no doubt, cons of a social insurance option-or what we now call a national insurance option.
	To dangle that option before the public, while talking about its advantages and how many people rather like it, but then to reject it, was, to be honest, slightly strange. On page 116, however, the Green Paper states:
	During the engagement process, many people told us that they thought an NHS-style system, where the full costs of care and support were met through taxation...would be the fairest option.
	It goes on:
	This would require a significant increase in the tax... For this reason we have ruled out this option.
	Then, unless I have misunderstood the sequence of the Green Paper, it states:
	The advantage of this system is that it would be universal, and would probably be the simplest and most easily understandable way of funding care and support.
	It is almost as if two hands wrote that section of the Green Paper, and I am bound to say that I see the cold, grey hand of the Treasury all over it. That option should not necessarily be the way ahead, but it requires serious study.
	The Secretary of State talked about Beveridge, but I thought that, for my colleagues who are students of Beveridge, he was getting into trouble. After all, when Beveridge studied the risks and needs facing society then, and the likely risks and needs in the future, he thought that they were essentially insurable. One had a real risk-if I can use the world risk-of becoming old, so one needed a retirement pension. There was always the risk of unemployment, sickness and death, so a social insurance system was the fairest way ahead.
	I look at those on the Liberal Benches and wonder, May I refer to Beveridge as the last great Liberal?  [ Interruption. ] I am glad that they are still awake. He was certainly a great Liberal, and my guess is that, if back then the demography was going to mean that huge numbers of people faced frailty, he would have wrapped up care in his social insurance system. I do not really understand Ministers' argument that to do so now would be a burden on employees. Yes, it would, and I understand the immediate argument that many constituents feel they pay too much tax, and that there are burdens. We would therefore have to be careful, but, before we say that employees should not have to carry that burden, we should note that they do so with pensions. Otherwise, the argument would amount to an attack on our pension arrangements. I suppose that national insurance is really how we pay for our national health service, too.
	I therefore urge the Government to reopen that idea, as an option, because it is a serious one. After all, the Secretary of State talked about the current economic difficulties, but we are presumably trying to fashion a system that is fit for purpose for 30, 40 or 50 years. Beveridge, in 1942, and those who became the Labour Government in 1945 had the vision and the courage to go for a, no doubt, expensive welfare state based around social insurance-and that was in 1942, when we had some economic difficulties and, if I remember my history, some difficulties with our European partners at that time. So are we really saying that, at the beginning of the 21st century, that idea is too difficult even to consider as a proper option?

Kelvin Hopkins: I very much agree with what my right hon. Friend is saying. I think that Beveridge, or the National Insurance Act 1948, set capital limits on ownership. However, the amount of capital that someone had to have was, in today's terms, absolutely enormous, so it covered only a tiny fraction of the richest parts of the population. If that were applied today, everyone would accept it; the problem is that the capital limits are far too low and affect millions of ordinary people.

Malcolm Wicks: Yes, that is helpful. Going for a social insurance option would not necessarily guarantee universal free care-a proportion could still be affected under the kind of arrangement that my hon. Friend has advocated. If we are consulting and thinking this through for a White Paper, that option should be there on the table.

Hywel Williams: rose-

Malcolm Wicks: I am happy to give way, but I must conclude soon to let others speak.

Hywel Williams: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He referred to taxation paying for pensions. This is not just a matter of practicality-there is something more fundamental to do with that terrible phrase, cross-generational solidarity. That point is in danger of being lost, I think.

Malcolm Wicks: Of course. Unlike the era of Beveridge and another great Liberal-I am being polite today- [ Interruption. ] I am referring to Lloyd George; this is, after all, the centenary of his introducing the old age pension, is it not?  [ Interruption. ] Perhaps we could have a Lib-Lab pact-you never know.

Stephen O'Brien: The hon. Gentleman is not a Liberal.

Malcolm Wicks: Well, he is a liberal with a small l.
	Unlike that era, we are now, demographically, in a situation where people might not only be retired for 30 or so years of their lives but, because of developments in higher and further education, be in education for 20 or 25 years. The issue that we are confronting is how to afford all the things we want in our social policies-both when people are young and when they are old-given that their working life will probably be only half their lifespan. Therefore, the idea that one way or another we should set aside more money during our working lives, whether through social insurance, private insurance or whatever, to pay for frailty, is not such an extraordinary one.
	I want to comment briefly on the two options in the Green Paper. First is the insurance option whereby, if I have understood the proposal, someone would be entitled to a share of costs in return for a one-off payment of perhaps £20,000 to £25,000. I put it to the Minister-it is recognised in the Green Paper-that surely one of the great problems with that is that large numbers of people would opt out. I am not saying that they should opt out, but faced with a situation where they are thinking that it is a lottery with a one in five chance that it might be needed, surely many would do so. The amount of the population insured would then become rather problematic.
	The Government's second option is the comprehensive option, of which I am much more in favour. It gets over the problem of people opting out because it is compulsory-let us use the C-word, although some would call it the nanny state. However, if we are serious about an insurance model, we need to ensure that everyone who could afford to pay would do so. Of course some people-ultimately the lucky ones, really-would get nothing out of it because they would not have any debilitating conditions and might die suddenly in their 80s. However, that is a bit like the national insurance system, and I do not feel that I have been tricked because I have not received unemployment benefit. I am rather pleased that I have not, and I look to the good people of Croydon, North to ensure that that continues, at least into the foreseeable future.
	I end with three questions for the Minister about the comprehensive option. First, how do we cover younger disabled people, given that this is very much a case of something being triggered at age 65? Secondly, how would it work with different cohorts? I can see that someone reaching the age of 65 might pay a certain sum of money, one way or another, but what about the current 80-year-old-how would it affect her? Would there be some sort of phasing in?
	Finally, following the Prime Minister's statement at the Labour party conference, which I welcomed, about free home care for those in the most critical need-I think that was the phrase-can the Minister say more about that? How does it relate to residential care? If somebody was getting free home care during their final months at home, and then the time came when they needed to go into residential care, perhaps for only a few months before coming back home or perhaps for ever, would that free care go with them? If not, would not a new unfairness be created there?
	I am grateful to the House for its patience.

Greg Mulholland: I am pleased to take part in the debate, and after the rather bad-tempered exchange at the Dispatch Box, I shall make it clear that I was asked speak on behalf of my party today and am very happy to do so. I am not apologising for anybody, and I will be here for the beginning, middle and end of the debate, although I might pop out for a cup of tea a little later if permitted.
	Here we are once again talking about the hugely important national issue of social care-talking again, rather than discussing concrete policies. Therein lies the frustration with how it has been handled over the past four years and indeed over the past few Parliaments. I will say one thing for the Government, which is that the Green Paper process and the current consultation process are entirely the right way to deal with this complex issue. The problem is that now is entirely the wrong time to put that process in place.
	Much is made of the well known conference speech by Tony Blair in 1997, but even more significantly, on 4 December that year the then Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson), in announcing the royal commission on long-term care, said:
	The present situation cannot go on much longer. People are entitled to security and dignity in their old age, so we must find a way in which to fund long-term care which is fair and affordable both for the individual and for the taxpayer.-[ Official Report, 4 December 1997; Vol. 302, c. 490.]
	Here we are 12 years on, and the rhetoric from the Government is absolutely identical.
	Like many people, I like the style and the refreshing openness of the new Secretary of State, but he and the other Ministers have to take it on the chin that this has been a spectacular area of failure throughout the course of this Government's time in power.  [Interruption.] If the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Corby (Phil Hope), wishes to intervene he is welcome to do so, but it is extraordinary that he can sit there and chunter when the Secretary of State himself has acknowledged today that the system is unfair, unclear and ineffective. I would not like to defend this Government's record on care, and I look forward to hearing him do so later.
	The Secretary of State is right that the way to deal with this issue is through consensus, working through the complexities and building a coalition across the political divide and with the many organisations that do wonderful work for older people, those with certain conditions and others. It is right to bring them together in a consultation about what should happen. However, the Government are now simply saying that that is a matter for the next Government, and that the current process is about obliging the next Government to act. That is disappointing and unacceptable.
	We have to accept where we are and the fact that there has to be a move towards a form of consensus, because this is such a difficult issue. I regret the announcements by both the other parties of their partial policies that do nothing to take us forward to that consensus. Let us consider the problems-again, the Secretary of State gave an honest description of the failings of the current system and the reasons for change. The system is clearly underfunded, patently unfair and so unclear that, in many cases, people are not sure to what they are entitled or how to claim support and care.
	The quality of care in the current system is variable and, in some cases, unacceptably low. Too many older people who could remain in the community cost-effectively are admitted to residential care against their wishes. There is concern about the unfairness of a system in which eligibility rules for free NHS continuing care are not applied consistently even throughout England, never mind Wales and Scotland, leading to a postcode lottery-I do not like the term-for those with intensive needs.

John Mason: Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that we should have a uniform system across the UK, under which everybody gets exactly the same and there is no local decision making?

Greg Mulholland: Absolutely not. I was saying that there is not even consistently adequate care. I think that we all agree that we must reach a stage whereby all those who need care receive an adequate minimum level of care and know what the state will and will not provide and what they have to provide for themselves.

Kelvin Hopkins: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that there should not be a postcode lottery, but a standard that we should all expect, wherever we are?

Greg Mulholland: As the hon. Gentleman probably knows, our policy is to move towards a system-originally derived from Wanless and central to one of the options in the Green Paper-of minimum entitlement, on which people can rely. Beyond that, it is for local councils to retain the power to deliver services, hopefully in a much more joined-up way with local health boards, which will be elected under a Liberal Democrat Government. Moving towards a system of universal basic support, whatever that may be, is central to the Green Paper. The debate and the consultation are about that.

Mark Harper: Will the hon. Gentleman say a little about his party's view of the personalisation agenda? His comments about entitlement refer to available resources, but the shape of services locally will depend to some extent on individuals' decisions about how to spend their budgets.

Greg Mulholland: We entirely support the personalisation agenda-we have made that clear all along. Services are best when they are suited to individual needs.
	I want to mention briefly the important issue that many groups have raised: the potential changes to benefit. I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has clarified the position on DLA for under-65s, but I echo the worry that that has caused even more concern among older people and older people's groups about the future of the benefit on which they rely. As soon as people hit that arbitrary 65, they are no longer regarded as a carer or eligible for specific benefits-they have to rely on the state pension. The sooner we can get clarity from the Government about that and, indeed, about attendance allowance, the better.
	Let me deal with the two policy announcements that were made suddenly during the party conference season. How far from the idea of consultation and consensus could that possibly be? I am afraid that the two policies seemed more like the first pages of election manifestos than a serious attempt by the Government to work within their Green Paper framework. There is nothing seriously wrong with some of the ideas proposed by the Government and the Opposition, but they must admit that the policies announced by both are partial, would help only a small number of the people who are affected in the wide and complex sphere of social care-

Stephen O'Brien: I never claimed that they did anything else.

Greg Mulholland: Indeed. It is welcome that at least we now have something from the Conservatives, having had radio silence from them for many years, apart from barbed comments across the Dispatch Box. At least they now have a policy to discuss, even if it is criticised.
	It is a little rich for the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) to sit there chuntering when all the Conservatives have is a partial policy that would help a very small number of well-off people. Let us be clear about that. The only people who will be helped by that rather odd contribution from the Conservatives are those who can afford to pay a lump sum of £8,000 at that stage. That may help a few of the people who the Conservatives think are more likely to vote for them at the next election, but if they seriously think that that is any kind of contribution to this important debate, it probably would have been better for them to have carried on saying absolutely nothing at all.

David Anderson: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the very fact that the Conservatives call their scheme a home protection scheme shows where their minds are? Their policy is about protecting the home, not about delivering quality care for the elderly people of this country. [Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. If the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) wishes to make a comment, he knows the way to do so.

Greg Mulholland: The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson) is right. I have heard a lot from the hon. Member for Eddisbury in debates in this House and outside, and it is extraordinary for him seriously to suggest that his policy will do anything on the wider, important issue of keeping people in their homes. I found it extraordinary that when he was challenged on the Conservative policy for the millions of people who need but are currently not getting care, he wandered off and started talking about public health. I do not imagine that I was the only one in the House who was a little confused by that. The Conservatives might think that announcing that they will have a Minister for public health is exciting, but it has no relevance to today's debate.
	The Green Paper and the Prime Minister's speech are regrettable announcements. Of course it is important to deal with those who have the most critical needs, as the Prime Minister said in his speech, but the Government must also acknowledge that people with lesser needs all too often miss out because of the pressure on local councils, which have to change their eligibility criteria.
	I welcome the fact that the first substantive Government policy announcement on the issue since the Green Paper commits new money. It is not a huge amount, but it is reasonably substantial. If we are to have a consensus, for which the Secretary of State stressed the need, it must start with one very simple premise: there must be more Government investment and money. We can discuss how much that should be and of course, in the recession, we should talk about how much the Government can afford-to echo the comments of the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins), we should talk about priorities and overall Government spending commitments-but any serious policy to deal with this important area of care must commit new money. I welcome the fact that the Government have at least done that, but I wonder whether that will be all that is included in the Labour party manifesto at the next election.
	The Liberal Democrats acknowledge that there is a need for more investment. Any policy that does not deal with that is simply not credible. I look forward to seeing whether the Conservatives acknowledge that too, because all the experts and reports, including Government reports, and all organisations involved, stress that there must be more investment. Any party that does not do that-Help the Aged and Age Concern have said this explicitly-is not a party to which older people should turn.
	Other hon. Members have mentioned the important subject of carers. I cannot put it better than the right hon. Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks) when he said that the mention of carers in the Green Paper is a little feeble, and that carers are not at the core of its approach. I accept that it is a cross-departmental issue in the sense that theoretically carers and their benefits come under the remit of the Department for Work and Pensions, and that this is a health debate, but we need more joined-up thinking to recognise the extraordinary contribution that Britain's carers make. It is too awful to contemplate what would happen to many of those in need of social care without the contribution of those millions of people, many of them elderly themselves. It has been estimated that the annual contribution to society by carers is worth more than £87 billion-more than the entire NHS budget-but carer's allowance is still at a level that does nothing to recognise that contribution or the loss of income that carers often face because they take on those responsibilities.
	While there have been some important local initiatives-I have had the pleasure of visiting many of them-not enough support, advice and respite is offered to many carers. I reiterate the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) about the real concern that the £150 million earmarked for carers is not getting through. I ask the Minister to look at that and provide reassurance that the money is getting to the people whom it is designed to help.
	I also wish to raise the issue of personal expense allowance. The Conservatives have talked about this issue, and it is important, because we do not want people to have to sell their homes and we must do all that we can to support people to live in their own homes. However, we must also ensure that people in residential care have a standard of living that allows them to live out their later years in dignity, as we would want our own relatives to be able to do. The expense allowance is not currently set at a level to allow that, and that needs to be looked at.
	As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on dementia-the chair of the group, the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright), is no longer in his place-I could not end my comments without raising that issue. There is a real crisis, given the number of people who suffer, and will suffer, from the set of awful conditions that come under the dementia umbrella; it is forecast to rise to more than 1 million by 2025, which is not very far away. It is frustrating that the Green Paper is not clear about how much the focus will be on dealing with the particular and additional care needs of those who suffer from forms of dementia and their families, many of whom are carers themselves.
	Over the last year or so, I have been pleased to work with the Alzheimer's Research Trust and the author Terry Pratchett to call for more research into dementia. I appreciate that that comes under a different Department. There are real possibilities if we invest significant money in preventing some of those conditions, especially if more people can be enabled to carry on living independent lives. I ask for more joined-up thinking on the approach to dementia, so that more research is at the heart of the overall process, as well as a focus on the care needs of people with dementia.
	I, and my colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches, fully accept that we need to work together. I made my criticisms of the Government at the beginning of my speech; but now it is important to move forward. Whoever the Government after the next election-be it a Liberal Democrat one, a minority Labour one or possibly even the Conservatives in coalition with the nationalists, to which I think the right hon. Member for Croydon, North alluded-from next summer they will have to make this an absolutely top priority as part of their programme for the next Parliament. We do not want to go into the election after next with people saying, Yes we will do wonderful things in the future. We have had that for the past 12 and a half years.
	We need a consensus and to start by agreeing that any reform, however funded, must involve increased Government investment. We need a fairer and clearer system that is easier for people to access and understand. We need a complete overhaul of the care system in this country. We need a system that will ensure support for those who currently are not getting it even though they need help-unfortunately, many are in that situation. We need a system that does not punish people for saving and being thrifty throughout their lives. We need a system that means that people are not forced to sell their homes in the way that too many are still forced. We need a system that is focused a little more on preventive services.

David Anderson: The hon. Gentleman has laid out a plan with which I fully concur. Will he give me an idea of his party's position on how much such a system will cost the public purse?

Greg Mulholland: As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have committed to a form of the Wanless partnership model, and we are very clear that we believe that that is the right approach for moving forward to a system in which everyone receives an entitlement that they can know and understand. The hon. Member for Luton, North will not agree, but my party believes that both the state and individuals have to contribute. The question for the debate and consultation is by how much. That does not rule out considering increasing taxation; I echo comments that people taking part in the consultation should be allowed to consider that.
	We believe that we need a system that supports carers better and better represents their enormous contribution to society. We also believe that we need a system that finally starts to break down the social care and health divide, to which hon. Members have alluded. That is unfinished business in the NHS and the system as a whole, and it needs to be addressed. The Liberal Democrats are committed to a consensus, which is why we did not launch any partial policies at our party conference. We need to have comprehensive solutions that will deal with the system. It will not be easy. We should have been having this discussion two, five or 10 years ago, but we are having it now.
	Whoever are in government after the next the election, the Liberal Democrats will play their part in moving forwards to a social care system that, finally, is fit for the end of the 20th century-never mind the one that we really need, which is for the 21st century. In that society, older people will finally be able to live out the remainder of their lives, knowing what their entitlements are, what they can and should receive and where to go for support, and knowing that, whether they are in residential care or their own homes, they will be supported and appreciated by successive Governments in this country.

Laura Moffatt: I have had an interest in this subject for many years, particularly as an acute nurse who cared for people who then became well, or as well as they could, and had to return home, but who then often found that the services that they received were not of a standard that did justice to a fantastic NHS.I am delighted that we now have the opportunity to consult with our constituents on how best to move forward on shaping the future of social care.
	I decided to trust my constituents. I said, Why don't we have a conference to bring together carers-that fantastic band of people who care for others-and those for whom they care?, because they are an important element of this debate. Why don't we bring them together with those who are in charge of adult services, those who look after people from organisations such as Mind and Age Concern, and social care workers, who do an amazing job, day to day, keeping people in their own homes? Let's gather together 50 people who genuinely have an interest in the debate. I do not care how this debate today came about or why we have decided to have it; I am just very glad that we are having it and that we can raise such matters on the Floor of the House, because I want to ensure that the views of my constituents get through.
	I thank my hon. Friend the Minister, who has responsibility for social care services, for the time that he took to greet my constituents and for the care and the honesty with which he engaged with them to make them feel that they were part of the consultation, for we are talking about a Green Paper. That is the important thing that we need to understand, and there are options that need to be discussed. That is why I said that it was important that I trusted my constituents to look at the Green Paper in that light and to consider the options; and, as good people will, they came up with even more thing for Ministers to consider. I would like to put those forward.
	I will not reiterate why we are having this debate. We know that the demographics of this country are changing. However, I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks) that knowing that most people will live into their retirement is a good problem to have and one that we should celebrate. We need to ensure that that retirement is happy and dignified. That is why I believe that many of the proposals in the Green Paper will secure the future for people.
	I thought carefully about how we should try to pull all those thoughts together, because it is difficult when there are 50 lively people in a room who just want to get their views across. We therefore decided to put the questions that were posed in the Green Paper to them, to try to give some structure and a sense of purpose to the meeting. However, there were undoubtedly further issues to be raised. The first question raised in the Green Paper is how we build a national care service. My constituents felt very much that it was important to have a national standard that we can use as a benchmark for how local authorities roll out care in a way that is suited to people. Personalised care is incredibly important to people, but understanding that there is a quality standard in place was crucial to our debate. Indeed, I was so pleased that everyone who spoke knew that we needed to concentrate on the quality of the service.
	When I received the Unison briefing on the proposals in the Green Paper, it was interesting to see how much my constituents and carers echoed its views on ensuring that people are properly trained, so that, in whatever service they are in and however it looks, they have the necessary employment laws to back them up and that they receive the education and training that they need. However, that cannot be done on the cheap.

David Anderson: May I suggest to my hon. Friend that one of the dangers of the personalisation of social care is that people will choose to employ those who have not been properly trained and do not have the experience or knowledge to look after people properly?

Laura Moffatt: I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. There was indeed a sense of concern about that. Although people were keen to have their own care sorted and to feel that they were in the driving seat, there was also a great sense that we need the Government and the NHS to be involved to ensure standards and quality. In that respect, I utterly agree with my hon. Friend.
	When everyone came together at that conference, it was interesting to see a care worker sitting opposite the adult care services manager and alongside a carer as they tried to thrash out how we should create a national care service. It was stunning to see how much agreement there was among those people on how we should move forward. There was a tremendous sense of the future as they considered the document. One question that was asked was, What will happen if we are not able to achieve this in this Parliament? Would the system be dismantled in the future? Can we afford to have a sense of hope for a decent social care network and a strategy for the future, or might the system be dismantled? There is a great sense of insecurity about these things being promised and it being impossible to deliver them, and we need to be able to offer people a sense of security about the future.

Mark Harper: I think I know what the hon. Lady is alluding to, and I am sure that the Minister will say more about personalisation later. We have certainly always made it clear that we are very committed to ensuring that individuals have control over their services, so her constituents need have no worries. Whoever forms the next Government, personalisation will be very much on the cards and will continue to be part of the forward strategy.

Laura Moffatt: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I suspect, however, that my constituents were also worried that they might be saddled with a scheme that would cover them only if they went into a nursing home if they had paid a contribution of £8,000, rather than a system that would cover all people, whatever their needs. I suspect that they will have real concerns about that. I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying about personalised care, and that is something that the Government support, with all the provisos on quality, education and employment standards set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North. We must ensure that this is done properly; it cannot be done on the cheap. That is why Labour Members are having a proper debate about this. We must ensure that people understand that this cannot be done without a contribution, perhaps through taxation.
	In those discussions in my constituency, it was interesting that people really tried to understand the situation. I sincerely hope that we go for a comprehensive system, as that is what my constituents want. They said unanimously that the comprehensive system was the way forward. If they were to choose a method that involved a one-off payment, that would be their choice. They also asked what was going happen about setting up the system now, and whether they could plan for the future. There was a degree of ambiguity involved. Should this be a system in which they could make their contribution by paying a capped social insurance premium over a period of time, or could that be achieved by a one-off payment? I was really impressed by the way in which they held those discussions.

Kelvin Hopkins: I admire my hon. Friend for the consultation process that she has held. If I were to put my view to her constituents-or perhaps to my own-that the best system would be a professional public service, with fully trained public servants employed on an accountable basis, available to everyone, would they not have preferred that?

Laura Moffatt: I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. I suspect that if that question were put directly to my constituents, they would say yes. They were very pleased about the statement from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health about the NHS being the preferred provider, in whatever sphere. I suspect that that is true. There will be no elimination of the private sector in health. As the preferred provider, however, there is no doubt that the NHS offers security in the future. There is nothing better than knowing that the system is fully funded. That is why we are having a bit of a strange debate here, as it is all about genuinely looking at what will never be a cheap option, but one that should be fair, equitable and allow everyone access to care without having to sell their home. Even in the short time available during that morning conference, my constituents were beginning to understand how to implement and pay for such a service. That showed me that they believed that the proposed strategy was the right way forward.
	I am deeply grateful that one problem has been eliminated from our considerations. I would not have liked standing up to express my concern about the loss of disability living allowance for people up to the age of 65; I am delighted that I do not have to do that now. As we know, there is still a debate about the payment of attendance allowance to the over-65s, but, none the less, we need to continue to consider such important matters.
	One great shortcoming that people identified was the lack of information about available services; people felt that such communication should be very much a part of a national care service. Part of the difficulty they identified is that those most empowered with the ability to find out what is available always seem to get it. The service must offer proper outreach; it must be able to contact people and to offer the care. We are asking a lot of this service, to say the least, but I do not believe that we need to be mealy-mouthed about it. This is our opportunity to be bold about social care. If we are going to ask people to make a contribution, the service must, frankly, be beyond anything we have ever known in the sphere of social care.
	I pay tribute to those working in social care, because I know that they are doing their very best on constrained budgets. We have already talked about demographics and the fact that people are living longer, which means that more and more care must be provided. None the less, if we give people the tools to do the job they wish to do in the way they wish to do it and in a professional manner, I certainly believe that the service they provide will be incredibly special.
	Interestingly, people attending the conference also had a sense that we had a personal responsibility for our own health in older age. They were very keen that social care offered the means to overcome health inequality by ensuring that pensioners had access to health checks and took responsibility for their own health through exercise. I think that that is an incredible change. Very often in the past, I think, the NHS was viewed simply as a giver of care, but that sentiment has changed absolutely, particularly in Crawley where we have the Wellbeing programme. That programme offers people the opportunity to exercise, to assess their diet and to enjoy different activities in order to allow them to take responsibility for their own health. We know how much that can prevent ill health later on in life.
	The conference was very clear in what it wanted to put to the Minister. He spent a long time with us, but even more points were raised after he left. I could not stop people talking, as there were other things that they wanted to say. They were particularly pleased their points appeared to be taken seriously by the Minister. They are also pleased to know that I have had this further opportunity to press their points to the Minister today.
	We are looking at a system that could be fair and it could certainly be the best in the world if we managed to set up a national care service that prolonged people's active lives. That is what the service is in the business of doing-making sure that people keep well and are able to remain in their own homes. There is little point in offering a strategy that helps those who are going into nursing homes when it is undoubtedly the case that the overwhelming majority need to remain in their own homes. That is an absolute given. We must ensure that people can receive the care, help and love that they need in order to remain at home.
	We shall have to tackle all those matters without imposing undue stress and strain during what will undoubtedly be difficult years while we put the public finances back in order. Anyone who does not accept that is living in cloud cuckoo land. We cannot offer the world without requiring any contribution from those who would benefit from the service that we are providing, either through taxation or through a system of giving. Either way, we shall have to pay.
	When we discussed the issue at the conference, I was a bit cheeky and asked people to say whether or not they were taxpayers. There was an absolute divide between taxpayers and non-taxpayers over who should contribute. I believe that we should consider a taxation system, but that we should also consider how we can help others to make a contribution to ease the burden. It need not be an either/or system.

Kelvin Hopkins: The problem with the taxation system is that it is regressive. If it were made much more progressive, the sort of taxpayers at the conference would not suffer. In fact, they would be better off.

Laura Moffatt: I thank my hon. Friend-I think-for his intervention. I hear what he says.
	Without question, my constituents chose the comprehensive system as being the fairest and most equitable. Crucially, they also felt that it was the most sustainable. We know exactly where a system allowing people to opt in or out would lead us. People who wanted to keep their homes would choose to make a contribution of, say, £20,000 in order to do so, leaving everyone else behind. I firmly reject that system, and I am glad to say that my constituents do as well.
	We are being presented with an exciting opportunity. I sincerely hope what has been said today and by our constituents will be taken seriously. Today there has been a real sense that we have been given a chance to get the system right. The issue has never been tackled as well as it is tackled in the Green Paper. We have an opportunity to move forward, and to ensure that our constituents, and we ourselves-for I think that, as we grow older, we should declare an interest-enjoy security in old age, along with the care and dignity that older people so richly deserve.

Angela Browning: I intend to focus on people receiving care in the community rather than on the part of the Green Paper that deals with residential care, because, important though residential care is, it has already been mentioned a good deal. There are aspects of care in the community that give me cause for concern, and I hope that the Minister will cast some light on them when he responds.
	Page 97 of the Green Paper refers to the cost of care for people who are disabled early in their lives. It states:
	People who are disabled when they are born, or who become disabled during their working lives-
	presumably, during the early part of their working lives-
	are likely to have lower incomes and so will struggle to meet the cost of their care and support. At present, most people who are in this position will have their care and support funded by the state, because they are on low incomes. We envisage that this would continue.
	That sounds very encouraging and reassuring, but the Green Paper seems to contain conflicting information about how people receiving certain benefits would be affected. The Minister dealt with the question of disability living allowance, and I am delighted about that, but we have not yet been told what will happen to DLA recipients aged over 65, or to the people with lifelong disabilities whom I mentioned in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien)-namely, those on severe disablement allowance. Since the paper was published, I, like many MPs, have received correspondence from constituents on all those benefits who have been extremely unsettled by their reading of the Green Paper as to how they as individuals might be affected.
	The Green Paper mentions what will happen to people when their services are based on personal circumstances, but also states:
	Your money will be spent wisely and everyone who qualifies for care and support from the state will get some help meeting the cost of care and support needs.
	You will be able to get help with paying for your care and support needs, and your money will be used wisely to fund a care and support system that is fair and sustainable.
	I can see a slight conflict there. On the one hand, they are being told that their money will be individualised and personalised; on the other, they are told that it
	will be used wisely to fund a care and support system that is fair and sustainable.
	That brings me to the initial concern I felt on reading the paper, which is the focus on universal assessment for entitlement to universal entitlements. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that I am not misinterpreting the paper. Those people over 65 on attendance allowance think they will lose that benefit, which will go into a pool and the money will then be used wisely by a centralised state. The state will transfer the funding through local social services to avoid a problem the paper has not got to grips with: the system of assessment of need by social services. I would like to try to get to grips with it here.
	We want to fulfil people's needs as individuals, whether they are the over-65s on attendance allowance, younger adults on disability living allowance, or-as mentioned earlier in the debate-those who have needs but at the moment do not quality for any recognised benefit at all. There are many of them. We all see from our casework young adults who fight to get DLA and quite clearly should get it, but somehow do not tick the right boxes. Among that group, I would particularly identify people with chronic and ongoing mental health conditions, people on the autistic spectrum and people who do not tick the right boxes at the moment.

Kelvin Hopkins: The hon. Lady talks about ticking boxes. I have had two cases recently in my surgery involving people who have been interviewed by a doctor on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions and told that they are fit to work when they clearly are not. They have then looked at their form and found that the doctor has lied: the individual has said that they cannot do something and the doctor has put down that they can. Some of the medical practitioners are telling lies when filling in forms.

Angela Browning: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, as I was just coming to what is now regarded in this country as a universal assessment of the ability to work. Only this week I have had two cases that I am taking up and which I think are quite appalling. All of us in all parts of the House understand that there are a number of people on long-term sickness benefits who could be assisted to get back into work. In my constituency, a great many want that assistance and want to get back into paid employment, but we must understand that does not necessarily mean full-time work; it may also mean some progression into work that is suitable for them. It is not just about retraining but about a range of other things to enable the individual to take their place, either again or the first time, in the workplace.
	Following on from the hon. Gentleman's comments, let me highlight what universal assessment means. There is a lady who has worked full time for many years who has had a mastectomy as a result of breast cancer. Her clinicians say she is not ready to go back to work full time. She has had extensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy. She was required to attend for an assessment, at which she was asked to raise her arms above her head; as she was able to do so, she was told, Okay, you're ready for full-time work-with no mention of her possibly being able to go back on a part-time basis. Anybody who knows how draining chemotherapy and radiotherapy are on the system will know this is not just about asking, Can you raise your arms above your head and start work full time on Monday? She wants to return to work, but this is about gradually reintroducing her into the workplace. Her clinicians have said she might be ready to go back part time, but that she needs to do this gradually because she naturally gets tired very quickly, but that possibility has been totally dismissed.
	Another case I have dealt with is really quite tragic. A young girl in her 20s has had a tumour which has ravaged one side of her face, and she has had to have aggressive surgery to stop the spread of the tumour. She will need at least two or three more sessions of major surgery to help to rebuild her face, following the necessary removal of half of it in order to save her life. This young woman is single. She had her own home, which she lost as a result of being out of work while having this long-term surgery. Thankfully, she has now got a home of her own again. The comments made to her when turns up to these back-to-work interviews are outrageous. They are totally insensitive to a young woman who has gone through what I have described. The interviewers do not seem to take into account the emotional damage done to somebody in such circumstances.
	In assessing people's disability and how it impacts on their ability to manage their lives-perhaps with a little, or a lot of, support-we must look at the person as a whole. That is why individual plans and packages can triumph over the concept of the universal standard, where there is a tick box and someone's circumstances might not happen to lead to it being ticked or the person conducting the assessment not seeing the right category printed in terms. Further, I would not be happy for there just to be a list of conditions. As we all know, there are levels in respect of many medical conditions, and individuals can be affected very differently by them. For some, a condition can considerably hamper their ability to look after themselves, whereas others might be able to cope with a little help. This notion of universality therefore worries me enormously, because it means there will be winners and losers, and the losers will be those who are least able to make their case.

Greg Mulholland: I commend the hon. Lady for making her points so very powerfully. Does she agree that there is insufficient acknowledgement both of mental health conditions and the fluctuations of many conditions both physical and mental, and that they are simply not taken into account in current assessments?

Angela Browning: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I am sure the House has become fed up with me going on about these two issues, and particularly mental health and the autistic spectrum. Such conditions do not fit neatly into any identified national criteria. They are very difficult to assess, and because people's conditions can fluctuate, on one day they might pass a test and some might think, There isn't much wrong here, but they can deteriorate very rapidly, or circumstances can affect them and make them deteriorate very rapidly. I thus find the one-size-fits-all attitude to providing for the most vulnerable in society worrying, and I hope the Minister will reassure me on this. I know that he has a great deal of knowledge of these matters, and certainly of the autistic spectrum as he has taken the Autism Bill through the House with many of us who have an interest in the subject.
	I want now to talk a little about those at the other end of the age spectrum: the elderly. I have mentioned my concern about their being denied disability living allowance, but there is another problem in respect of the elderly. I agree that old age is marvellous-I have been to two 100th birthday parties in my lifetime; this has been in the past few years because as a child one did not trot round going to 100th birthday parties-and the fact that people are living longer, which we can all observe, is to be celebrated. However, this is again about balance and a realisation of what comes with really old age.
	Frailty, which might not necessarily involve a diagnosis of any particular condition or illness of which everyone is aware, has an impact on the individual. It affects their physical ability and their mental ability. Nobody ever really thinks they are going to get so old that they cannot do things for themselves, so there is a mental impact to consider.
	Loneliness has been mentioned, and social isolation has a huge impact on older people. I represent a rural seat, where one sees a lot of this; some people still live in isolated conditions and do not have the usual arrangement whereby neighbours live right next door. In this universal system, how are these people who are as entitled-and we are talking about entitlement-to get the right help and support as those who live in the larger, urban conurbations, to be treated as individuals, and how are their needs to be met? When I read the document, I worry that they have not been thought of and that they will get left behind.
	I serve on the Public Accounts Committee. The Minister will know that in recent years the National Audit Office has put before the PAC reports on very important subjects. We had an excellent report on dementia, another on stroke services and a more recent one on autism-another one, on rheumatoid arthritis, is coming up. Common themes run all the way through all those reports, but the one that perhaps emerges the strongest is the inability of Government Departments and local government departments to work together when they need to do so-for example, in health and social service. They work in silos.
	We have heard a little this afternoon about the need for services to work together to provide a holistic approach for the individual, but I must tell the Minister that that will require more than everybody just standing up and saying, We need to do this. If there is a need for any national structure, it is in this sphere. A national structure is not about saying, Fred Bloggs in one part of the country will receive this. I would rather somebody more local to Fred Bloggs decided what he needed, based on how he presents at any given moment in time. If there is indeed a role for national structures, it is for the Government to examine carefully what needs to be done to ensure, from the top, that we have a system whereby Departments, including the Department for Work and Pensions, work together with social services, local Jobcentre Plus branches and the housing departments. All those public sector bodies that can deliver the solution to an individual's needs now require more than just having their heads knocked together. There needs to be an imperative from the top that makes all this happen.
	I realise that it is difficult; we all understand about budgets. One of the weaknesses in any system aiming to resolve these problems is that if one puts a little bit of money into this year's budget to resolve a problem at the lower end, be it dementia, autism or something else, people feel that it should have been spent on the higher needs. Yet if it is not put into this year's budget, somewhere along the line, perhaps even a few years later, the problem will turn into a massive call on the public sector purse because it will have turned into a crisis.
	Let us consider the economic point of view. All the reports that the PAC has seen relating to health have shown a very clear benefit to the public purse to be had from doing things the right way. I know it sounds hard when a politician talks just about the economics, because of course every one of those reports contains the human interest issue; each one deals with the impact on people's everyday lives. When the Minister winds up, will he give me reassurance and clarity on that point? I believe that the way forward, particularly with care in the community, is to have people's needs properly addressed.
	I would not want to see the bar being raised yet again for the eligibility assessment, particularly when we talk about how this is to be financed. The bar could simply be raised, which would exclude more people at the bottom in order to provide for those at the top. It might sound a logical argument to provide for the most needy-of course it does, and that has to be done. However, it is quite interesting and surprising-this applies all around the country and not just in my part of Devon-to see how many social services departments settle out of court when, very occasionally, somebody challenges the statutory services through the courts or even starts the process of legal action, in order to obtain their legal rights. That tells us something. It tells us that the authorities know they are not fulfilling their role as they should, properly identifying needs and coming to an agreement to fund a package that will meet the needs of the individual.
	Finally, I am a great fan of direct payments. I have some personal knowledge of them within my family, but the way the system has been introduced around the country beggars belief. In some areas, it has been done in the most simplistic way as far as the user of the service is concerned. I will name an authority that I think is an exemplar in this regard: the unitary authority in Bournemouth, which is not in my constituency but is an authority with which I am familiar. When it first set up direct payments, it made quite sure that when people employed someone, all the necessary paperwork and administration were in place and simple to follow. It has a helpline for the people who use the system and the forms are extremely simple and straightforward. The authority did a lot of research and did it before people started to use the system.
	If such a thing can happen in one area of the country, why do authorities not share the information with each other? Instead, we have seen some authorities whip away the services from those who were receiving them directly from the local authority before they had decided how to get them on to a direct payment system. It totally backfired and caused the most terrible anxiety to people and their carers.
	If we want to take a top-down approach, let us take exemplars of best practice and let the Government make it their business to ensure they are spread throughout the country so that people can see how to do it properly. Let us not have the Government or a national system telling individuals from the top down what is needed in their package or who is going to deliver it. We need that freedom so that people's packages can be tailored to their individual needs. Taking that away from them will be a retrograde step.

David Anderson: As Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Bill Rammell), I have had quite a tough week. I have sat through Adjournment debates, statements, an Opposition day debate yesterday afternoon and a Westminster Hall debate. If I stand back from the issues being discussed, I can see that what was really important and what made it a huge experience for me was listening to people across all this House who had true, real-life experience of what we were talking about. They were people who had served in the forces. Today's Opposition Whip, the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne), spoke yesterday about his experience in the reserves-I believe in the naval reserve. Those people knew the real world that they had come from.
	I want to speak from my experience as someone who worked as a care worker; 20 years ago this month, I fell into care work by mistake. I had been made redundant as a coal miner, which I had been for 20 years, and I was looking for something to fill my time in the short break before I picked up something else. I went for a 13-week part-time contract at Newcastle city council as a care services driver and 16 years later I left to come and work in this place. But the importance of the story is not why I went there and stayed there. I was fortunate that I went to work in a place that was built by two visionaries: Jeremy Beecham, the leader of Newcastle city council; and a gentleman who is no longer with us, Brian Roycroft, who was the director of social services and, in fact, the leader of social services directors across the country. In the mid-80s, they purpose-built a building in Newcastle called the Minories project, which was constructed to deliver real care in the community. The place was expensive, but it was quality. It included sheltered housing, and the people who lived there had access, as and when they needed it, to staff who worked in another part of the building. It had a respite centre with 16 beds, which meant that over a 10-week period 160 people could stay, giving their families some relief while we looked after them and saw to their needs.
	The building had a restaurant that was open to the public, and people over 65-years-old right across Newcastle could go there and meet their old friends. It was a real place that really worked. It had a day centre that was second to none, and we even had our own bus-a 1970s Mercedes bus, which I loved driving. If I live until I am 90, I shall never, ever forget the pleasure that I used to get from driving that bus and seeing a particular old lady called Florrie, who used to look out of the window, with the sunshine in her eyes. The only thing was that she could not see, because she was totally blind, but the look of pleasure on that lady's face will stay with me as long as I live. Memories like that represent the real experience of people who work in care.
	I went from being a man working the coalface in March 1989 to being a man standing with a doctor in March 1990, helping to put a prolapsed womb back into a 91-year-old lady. It was totally different, but that is the real work that carers have to do, day-in, day-out, 365 days a year. I want to put on the record my appreciation of the work that they do, whether they are professional carers or carers who help their family or friends. The real joy of that job was the total appreciation that we got from people after doing something as simple as cutting up their food, fastening their laces or helping them go to the toilet-things that we all take for granted, but things that, sadly, they were no longer able to do. But we had to do that work, and it was a privilege to do it.
	The great thing that made that building work was that it had a good number of staff. It was a very staff-intensive unit, but because of that it worked. Sadly, however, because it was the early 1990s, we also had to face the reality of the budget constraints that our authority was working under. It was being told that it had to put a price-not a value-on care, and the price of the care that we delivered was, sadly, not in line with the price that the private sector delivered. That is hardly unusual, when we consider that legislation at the time said that there was a £50 disincentive on each bed in a public home as opposed to in a private home. We started off with that loss. If we then consider that staffing and training levels were lower in the private sector, and that their terms and conditions were much lower, we see that it was obvious that the public sector, on a purely comparative basis, could not compete.
	We, as an authority, tried to set up an employee share option plan, which would have taken the homes out of direct public ownership and into an arm's-length body that the staff would run. I was unhappy with the plan ideologically, but practically we tried to pursue it. Despite that, the plug was pulled by the then Secretary of State for Social Security. He did not believe that the plan went far enough into the private sector, and the reality was that 25 homes closed in Newcastle and we were left with a rump of four. Home care workers had to pick up the pieces, but at the same time there were too many people to look after. The circle was squared by a change in the criteria for accessibility to care. The criteria for vulnerability and frailty were increased, as was the age level, and people could not access care. Those choices were enforced; they made people such as Brian Roycroft and Jeremy Beecham despair; and they made the staff and the families we took care of despair. So the truth is that, with the piece of work that we are all talking about today, we have the chance to rectify some of those mistakes.
	As I said to the Conservative spokesman, the position we reached in the mid-1990s was the result of a programme of 16 years before, from 1979 onwards, when the people of this country made a choice that they wanted tax cuts. The Conservative party delivered those tax cuts, but one cannot give tax cuts and keep on giving quality services-it does not work. If the money is not there, the service cannot be delivered in the way that the people of this country deserve. There was less money to spend, so there was less money to be given out for care services, as well as for other areas.
	The policy was also, clearly, ideologically driven. It was not a mistake that care homes were closed-it was direct destruction of the public sector. In the same way, it was not a mistake that public transport was taken away from council ownership and put into the private sector, or that council housing was taken out of the remit of councils. We had two choices back then, and now we have a chance to move forward and make choices in the other direction.
	Since 1997, we have seen some improvements. For example, there have been huge improvements in how we look after people at work. The national minimum wage has been a huge positive for people working in the care sector. We now give people guaranteed holidays, people have better maternity rights and paternity rights, and to some extent we have levelled the playing field between private and public sector provision. We have increased resources and support to local authorities and the national health service, and we have supported and developed independent providers. There have been positive changes to training, skills and the registration of staff, so that caring is seen as a professional job.
	All that has been important, but it has not been enough. The sad reality is that underneath it all, as the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) said, we are under-resourced. That is the nettle that we have to grasp, whether we like it or not. My hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt) said that care cannot be done on the cheap. In fact, low-cost, nasty, inefficient, unsafe and dangerous care can be done on the cheap, but quality care cannot be done on the cheap. We need to realise that.
	I am sad that the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) has left the Chamber, because I thought that he would engage in a debate about what has been done in Scotland, where the introduction of free care has been accepted. I believe that there have been problems and that there is debate between the Scottish Executive and local authorities about who picks up the tab. The royal commission came up with some positive views. If we, as the United Kingdom Parliament, had taken up the challenge back then, the problems that have arisen in Scotland would not have been an issue. We could have said, We'll provide for this need across the whole United Kingdom, and we'll do it in a way that avoids these potential problems. It is a shame that that did not happen.
	We have a national health service that ensures that someone who is out walking and gets run over by a bus will be taken to a hospital and looked after. But if someone cannot look after themselves, not because they have been run over by a bus but because they cannot go to the toilet on their own, fasten their shoelaces or feed themselves, they are told, Sorry, you need to sell your house and give us everything you've got except £16,000. I cannot for the life of me see why that is; it is not fair.
	This Government, to their credit, went to the people of this country with a 1 per cent. increase in national insurance contributions, directly to support improvements to the health service. I do not recall anyone-perhaps the Conservatives; I am not sure as I was not here at the time-opposing that. The public never complained about it: they said it was a good thing to do, and that was proven. I believe that we should be looking at doing that again. It is nearly a year since we had a 2.5 per cent. VAT cut, which apparently amounts to £12.5 million. Just think-if we put 0.5 per cent. on VAT, that would create £2.5 billion. Perhaps my sums are wrong; if so, someone brighter than me can put me right. That is the sort of mental attitude that this House must have in saying that there are ways to square the circle but they will have a cost.
	I want to focus a little on the Tory proposals. I am sceptical, but genuinely interested, and I want to try to work out what the Tories have brought forward. The £8,000 proposal is worth looking at, if taken as a purely mathematical argument. I understand that they said at their conference that if five people pay £8,000, one person gets two years of care out of that £40,000, and the other four will not need it. How many people will have to pay before it becomes effective? Will it be five, 50, 5,000 or 50,000? If people do not buy into the scheme, it will not get off the ground, and what will we be able to do in the meantime? There have also been rafts of reports that the costs are being underestimated as they will be not £20,000 but £26,000 a year, and that the average stay will be three and a half years rather than two. If that is the case, the figures will obviously be inflated.
	As I said to the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien), I believe that people will go into care earlier in future. When people are assessed now and told, You should be in care, they say, I am not going into care. They go into care at the last moment because of the pernicious impact of losing their home and not being able to leave it to their children, which is understandable. In future, if they realise they need care, they will say, Yes, I will go in early, because my home is now safe. However we square the circle, people will go into care earlier and stay in longer. They will get the care they need at the front end rather than have to go in when they are on their last legs. The average period in care will be much longer.

Angela Browning: If those people were self-funding, would they not be subject to assessment to see whether they needed to go into care? They could not just go in voluntarily without a full medical need to be admitted.

David Anderson: I agree absolutely. They would need medical, social and financial assessments, but my point is that that happens now and people are told, The best place for you is in care. They say, I know that, but I am not going in. In future, they will say, I will go in, because my family is going to keep my home. There will be an incentive, whereas there is a disincentive at the moment because they want to protect the assets that they want to leave to their children. To a certain extent that is why we are having this debate, and the Opposition should bear that in mind and address it. The hon. Member for Leeds, North-West spoke about consensus, and if we are having a genuine debate a consensus has to be hammered out. We need much more data to show whether the £8,000 proposal is a runner.
	The proposal is a private insurance scheme. I do not know whether private insurers will be full of the milk of human kindness all of a sudden and say, We will run the scheme free. It hardly seems likely of a company such as Aviva, which has just announced almost £3 billion of profits. It might say, We can afford to absorb this; we will do it for nothing, but I doubt it very much.
	The crux of the matter is that some people will not be able to find £8,000, some people will choose not to pay it and some will not have a pension lump sum. Why say to someone, On the day you retire, give us £8,000? Why not say, Give us £3 a week for 50 years while you are at work? That is how we fund the national health service and most of the public services in this country. It is how we should have been funding care for the past three decades and how we should fund it going forward-it is called collectivism.
	We have good quality caring staff who put a lot of trust in us to find a way forward for them. That is the whole team-ancillary workers, home care workers, domestics working in homes, social workers and people classed as backroom staff who do the paperwork and ensure that things are right and proper. They need to know that they are in a service worth working in. They are professionals and we need to treat them as such. We need to respect them and reward them in a way that clearly has not happened in the past.
	The royal commission reported that we should pursue various things. Ministers said that the report did not get consensus, but I can inform them that when it came out, I was the chair of the policy committee for the trade union, Unison. We set up the right to care group, which involved campaign groups including one of the main ones, led by Claire Rayner, user groups, carers and workers. The group was clear that the best way to address the problem was for the service to be directly funded by tax. If we had done that then, it would have been embedded in the culture of this country by now and we would not have been having this debate. If we had bitten the bullet at the beginning of this century, the Opposition would have seen the system work and been converted in the same way as on the minimum wage and the other positive things that we have done. We should go for the fully funded option and, if we cannot do that, we must ensure that it plays a huge part in future.
	We have been here before and we did not make the right choices. We must now make the right choices-it is the mark of a civilised society. The shadow Chancellor said in his speech at conference, We're all in this together. The Conservative party's programmes are not about us all being in this together, but about us all being individuals. I believe that we are in this together because none of us knows where we will end up if we are fortunate enough to live into old age. We should provide collectively.
	In the past three decades, we have failed to provide for the people of this country. It was interesting to hear the hon. Member for Eddisbury describe how he is trying realise Tony Blair's promises. I lived about 10 miles from Tony Blair for 25 years, though politically we are probably a million miles apart. However, I agreed with him when he said that we are best when we are bold. I say to my hon. Friend on the Front Bench, Be bold, comrade.

Several hon. Members: rose -

Mr. Speaker: Order. There is plenty of time left for Back-Bench contributions before the Minister of State winds up, but I hope that the Member who has the floor will have regard to the fact that others also wish to contribute and do not want their contributions to be unreasonably squeezed.

Mark Harper: I am grateful for that guidance, Mr. Speaker, and I will endeavour to live by it.
	First, I want to say something in response to the way in which the Secretary of State opened the debate. Given that he began with some rather cheap remarks about my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State and that he said that the subject of the debate was the most important in his in-tray, it is extraordinary that he left at 3.24 and has not stayed to the end.
	On a happier note, I listened carefully to the remarks of the right hon. Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks) about our ageing society and the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) about the number of people in our society who are over 100. That reminds me that this year on 6 August I had the great pleasure of being invited to the 105th birthday party of my constituent, Mrs. Lily Strugnall, who lives in Hanover court in Cinderford, in a home where her daughter, who is in her 80s, also resides. That provides some interesting lessons about our ageing society. Mrs. Strugnall received her sixth 100th birthday card from Her Majesty the Queen and I noted that this year Her Majesty had changed her outfit. As an interesting aside, someone in Gloucestershire who had received four 100th birthday cards from Her Majesty and noted that she had worn the same outfit in each one wrote to the palace to complain and had a personal visit from one of the royal princes with a revised design showing a different outfit. That shows that the palace can listen to our constituents as well as we can.
	Given that I do not have much time and that I want other hon. Members to have an opportunity to speak, I shall focus specifically on the benefits in the Green Paper, to which several hon. Members referred, that cause our constituents concern. The Green Paper mentions attendance allowance, which, according to the Library briefing, is the main social security benefit that goes to people over 65. Although one cannot apply for disability living allowance once one is 65 or over, it continues after 65 for those who are already getting it. It is worth spending a moment on those allowances.
	Two rates of attendance allowance currently apply. The lower rate is £47.10 and the higher rate is £70.35 a week. They are significant amounts. I am sure that many who receive them would say that they are not high enough, but they are significant amounts that make a significant difference to the quality of people's lives. They are based on need and not means-tested using income or capital. They are tax free and non-contributory. They are therefore very different in nature from the social care support that one receives through a local authority, which is means-tested. That is one of the reasons for the debate.
	Given that the Secretary of State mentioned DLA, it is worth noting that whereas attendance allowance has only a care component, assessed on personal care needs, DLA has a care component and a mobility component. For many people, the mobility component, which under the higher rate is enough to fund a car through the Motability scheme, makes a huge difference. It sometimes makes the difference between a person being independent or otherwise. Will the Minister refer to that in his remarks?
	Those benefits are quite distinctive, because if someone meets the conditions and receives them, they can spend the money as they choose. Effectively, it gives them all the advantages of an individual budget. In a sense, attendance allowance and disability living allowance are individual budgets par excellence, because the funds go to the individual, who can then decide how best to spend them. The concern of many organisations and disabled people is that if the allowances were effectively folded into the social care system, the funds would become means-tested, cash-limited and rationed.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton gave some examples of how that could be damaging, and I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien), who speaks for the Conservatives on these matters, made it very clear that we are not tempted to go down that road. In the time that the Minister has available, which I know is increasingly compressed, will he dwell on how the proposals to fold attendance allowance and other disability benefits into the social care system seem to be a step in the opposite direction from the welcome moves and his agenda towards a more personalised approach?
	We are saying to local authorities, We want you to assess people and agree on an amount of financial support, and ensure either that they have the opportunity to take the money in cash to spend themselves or that you continue to provide the services while allowing the individual to be in the driving seat about what the services look like, yet folding benefits that people already receive and control into the local authority system takes us in the opposite direction. The Minister will know as well as I do that getting the personalised approach working and getting local authorities to adopt it with enthusiasm is not as easy as it ought to be. Anything that takes us in the opposite direction is not to be welcomed.
	It is worth remembering that a significant number of people get those benefits. As of February this year, nearly 1.6 million people receive attendance allowance, and almost 1 million people above pension age-65 years-get disability living allowance. If we add those numbers and divide the sum by the number of parliamentary constituencies, we see that every hon. Member has on average 4,000 over-65s who get one or other allowance. That is a significant number of people who may be concerned about the proposals in the Green Paper.
	I draw the Minister's attention to what the Secretary of State said at the beginning of the debate. He said that, often, talk of change is unsettling for people, which indeed it is. That is not a reason for not changing something, but the unsettling nature of change is made worse when the Government's intentions are not clear, so will the Minister clear up this matter? On 30 September, in  Disability Now, he said:
	All the models that
	the Government
	have done have not included DLA...DLA is not under threat and people can be very happy.
	On 13 October-just a couple of weeks later-his colleague Lord McKenzie of Luton said that the Government were not ruling out any options. After being pressed a number times, he explicitly said that the Government
	are considering all disability benefits.-[ Official Report, House of Lords, 13 October 2009; Vol. 713, c. 112.]
	However, the Secretary of State told a conference of directors of adult social services in Harrogate that he wanted to close down the controversy over DLA and made it clear that the Government had ruled out any suggestion that DLA for under-65s would be brought into the new national care service. Given that the Minister said that DLA was not being considered, that his colleague in the other place said that it was, and that the Secretary of State implicitly accepted that it was being considered because he ruled it out for the under-65s, I do not think that the Government have been very clear. That is partly why people find change unsettling. They are given mixed messages and they do not know what is going on.
	It is also worth asking what would happen to carer's allowance in those circumstances. Some 500,000 people receive carer's allowance, but in order to qualify for it a claimant must be caring for a disabled person. The definition of a disabled person in that instance is someone who receives the middle or higher rate care component of disability living allowance, or attendance allowance-or, in a smaller number of cases, constant attendance allowance paid with a war or industrial disablement pension. If changes are made to attendance allowance, they could have an impact on whether someone is entitled to carer's allowance. The Minister needs to set people's minds at rest about whether the changes in attendance allowance will trigger changes in entitlement to carer's allowances.

Hywel Williams: Many people receive carer's allowances for caring for people who receive attendance allowance, because they need regular and substantial care-more than 35 hours a week-so there would be several knock-on effects on people's income if changes were made to attendance allowances.

Mark Harper: The hon. Gentleman makes a sensible point that supports what I have said.
	Many groups that represent disabled people are very concerned about the proposals and have submitted responses to the consultation. For example, the Royal National Institute of Blind People and Action for Blind People have said that they are strongly opposed to the loss of attendance allowance. RADAR has said that it is
	adamant that no one is getting their mitts on vital extra-cost benefits.
	It makes the point that such benefits are designed to help to meet the extra costs of being disabled and needing such care, and that people would lose choice, control and independence if they were removed.
	Leonard Cheshire Disability also opposes any moves to take the DLA care component and attendance allowance into broader social care funding. The National Autistic Society is very concerned about the proposals, as is Age Concern. So a broad spread of organisations that work in the field are very concerned.
	Neil Bateman, a welfare rights specialist who writes for the website communitycare.co.uk, makes the point:
	The AA/DLA recipient...decides what to spend the money on...the core principle behind Individual Budgets, whereas transferring AA/DLA to social care...would involve extending bureaucratic control over people's lives, undermining the new philosophy of individualisation and choice.
	That is exactly the point that I made earlier. The Government need to think again about this change. The Secretary of State has gone some way by ruling out changing DLA for those under 65, but that still leaves more than 1 million over 65 and a significant number on attendance allowance with concerns that have not been allayed.
	The issue of devolution and the impact on the benefits system has been mentioned. The very good Library paper for this debate points out:
	Social security is a reserved matter in Great Britain and a single body of legislation applies across England, Wales and Scotland. Any move to change the benefits rules in England alone would...be a significant departure.
	That is of especial interest and concern to me, because I represent a constituency that borders Wales. For example, we no longer have a national health service across the UK: we have four different health services with different policies and different ways of dealing with challenges. A national care service would really be an England care service, which would deliver care in England, not across the UK. For people who live towards the southern end of my constituency, in Sedbury or Beachley for example, the nearest town is Chepstow, which is in Wales, and I would not want them to face artificial restrictions on the best option for them because that would involve crossing a border within the UK. Equally, somebody living in Wales with a service to be delivered in England would be restricted. That would be a retrograde step and not one that we should support.
	The Minister knows that I am concerned about that matter, because I asked him a question at Health questions a couple of weeks ago. New information has come into my hands since then. I drew his attention to the fact that there had been a Green or White Paper-I forget which-on this in May 2008 that had talked about the impact on the devolved parts of the United Kingdom and the necessity to talk to the Scottish Government and the Welsh Assembly Government. He kind of indicated that that might have happened. I asked him about it, and I think that he said that those discussions were taking place.
	I received a briefing for this debate from the Scottish Association for Mental Health. According to that association, the Scottish Government reported as late as 16 September this year that they had not been consulted about the effect of the policy change on people in Scotland. A paper was produced touching on the impact on the devolved parts of the United Kingdom in May 2008 and the Green Paper before us was published in July this year. Things have been left remarkably late, therefore, given that the Government are talking about publishing a White Paper in the next few months yet discussions with devolved Governments had not taken place as of 16 September.
	It would be helpful if the Minister could indicate whether those discussions are now under way-whether at official or ministerial level-or, if they are not, when they will start. If they are under way, will he indicate where they have got to? We must ensure that we do not make changes to the UK-wide benefits system that will affect different parts of the United Kingdom without having had those conversations. That might leave people in the lurch, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton suggested has happened in other local authority areas.
	There are real concerns about the impact on benefits which affect, as I said, on average 4,000 people in every constituency in the United Kingdom. That will concentrate the minds of hon. Members on both sides of the House as we approach the general election. There are also other issues that have not really come up about the impact on the devolved parts of the United Kingdom. I know that the Minister will be short on time, but if he can at least touch on those points, I would be most grateful.

Paul Burstow: I am delighted that we are having this important debate. The Secretary of State was right when he identified that the matter before us will pose an important challenge in the next Parliament for whoever find themselves in Government. The question is whether we can build a consensus this side of the general election. Although this debate has many threads that could be pulled together to create a consensus, the environment in which we are having the debate-with a general election not far off-probably makes it impossible this side of the general election to reach that final consensus. Whoever is in government after the election, however, will need to drive quickly and forcefully to deliver a consensus, because if we do not have it, we will be talking about this matter again and again in a decade, but still have made no further progress.
	In an intervention on the Secretary of State, I referred to the consultation process. My local authority-the London borough of Sutton-has participated in that and organised two events with carers groups, carers themselves, people in receipt of care and various providers. It came up with five key findings in a 16-page report that will be winging its way to the Department. I picked up a draft this morning. The findings were that people
	preferred local to national (local flexibility with national assessment and minimum standards)...wanted a simple, transparent system that ends the 'post-code' lottery...preferred comprehensive over partnership and insurance (there was a distrust in insurance)...were interested in discussing taxation as an option
	and
	wanted more information on the subject generally.
	The last point is particularly germane to our debate. There is a huge level of ignorance about social care until people enter the system or encounter it vicariously through a relative's experience. Until that happens, most people do not know what the system is about. I would therefore greatly support anything that can be done to raise awareness or ensure that social care is a central issue at the next general election.
	The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson) talked about the rationing of care, in effect, through the use of eligibility criteria. Although there have been welcome changes in that respect over the past 10 years, I am also proud that my local authority, the London borough of Sutton, which has been under Lib-Dem control for the past 23 years, has managed to sustain its eligibility criteria in the moderate band. That ought not to go unmentioned, as only a handful of London boroughs still do that.
	Quality of care has been referred to in this debate in a number of ways. I want to pick up on two or three points that illustrate why we need to strive to do more to address concerns about quality. In their briefings for this debate, both the Parkinson's Disease Society and the Alzheimer's Society reported concerns about the quality of care and, in particular, the lack of social activities in residential care. People are left to receive care passively and, although routine tasks are performed, they do not receive the emotional support and engagement that comes through social activity. There is also a crying need for more training, particularly on dementia.
	One subject that is a particular concern for me, and which I also think is a marker of quality of care, is the inappropriate-and I would go so far as to say abusive-use of antipsychotic drugs in residential settings. Not only do they bring people's lives to an end prematurely, but in some cases they kill people. The evidence has mounted over the years. I hope that Professor Sube Banerjee's report, which I am told is to be published next month, will not just be published, but generate genuine action from the Government.
	There has also been a lot of talk about home care, which is undoubtedly an important component of what we want to see happen. However, home care can become as isolating and institutionalising as residential care if it is not well delivered. There are plenty of documented cases and audit reports demonstrating that. Again, training is an essential part of that, particularly in manual handling. We need to avoid having a revolving door of poorly paid and poorly trained staff or a succession of ever-changing faces coming in and providing brief care interventions. We also need to avoid having to chase people to get them there in the first place.
	Reference has been made to telecare. I have seen it being developed and delivered in many parts of the country. It undoubtedly has a contribution to make, but it cannot be a substitute for emotional support or that human touch and kindness. If telecare is a substitute for those things, what has it become? It has become little more than the electronic tagging of the elderly.
	The central debate is about funding and how we pay for care. When we address the care of the elderly part of our population, we must keep in mind dementia and the fact that two thirds of those in care homes suffer from it. The bills that they face are huge. Some would describe them as a tax on dementia-indeed, the Alzheimer's Society labels them as such. We therefore need to design a system in which the risk is fairly shared across society, find ways of removing barriers to accessing to capital-the figure of £1 trillion for the assets that the over-65s owned before the recession is not to be ignored in this debate-and ensure that people can access financial services in contributing to the costs of their care.
	However, the silence in the Green Paper on the means test thresholds and the overall funding levels makes the whole thing ring rather hollow. Without those, it is hard to judge what the intention or purpose behind the design of the system will be. One way in which the Government clearly hope to try to redirect resources is through the change to attendance allowance and disability living allowance. Although I welcome what has been said about disability living allowance in respect of the under-65s, there are still question marks over the rest.
	Let us be clear: DLA and attendance allowance are the perfect direct payments, because they maximise individuals' personal choice and control over how they use the resources that they receive. They are based on need and are not means-tested. We need to understand the consequences of folding them up into social care budgets. One of the consequences, as we have just heard, is the possibility of breaking the link to the carer's benefits and possibly making it harder for that benefit to be paid at all. I therefore hope that we do not go down that path.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) mentioned the personal expenses allowance. In the past, there was a promise of a consultation on that, and the Green Paper would have been an ideal opportunity at least to ask whether the allowance was fit for purpose and sufficient. Anyone who goes into residential care and is funded by the state will find that the state takes most of their money away from them. They are handed back only £21.15 a week to meet all their personal costs. Frankly, that is not enough to give anyone a reasonable quality of life, to give them the right to buy a present for their grandson, to have a decent haircut, or whatever else they might need. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests that at least £40 is necessary to give any justice to those people in residential care.
	The national care service seems to be the centrepiece of the Green Paper, but what is it really going to be? Will it be a virtual organisation, or will it become a real one? It is not entirely clear what is intended. If it is about providing a national framework of eligibility, that is welcome. If it is about greater clarity and the portability of care packages, that is welcome, too. It is important to recognise, however, that concerns have been expressed about how national eligibility criteria will be made to stick around the country. Those concerns emerged from the consultations in Sutton. How can we create assessment tools that will guarantee consistency of approach? We have seen, as the continuing care framework was rolled out across the country, that there are clearly inconsistencies between one part of the country and another.
	The right hon. Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks) talked about joined-up assessments, and he was absolutely right. That leads me to ask another question of the Minister: whatever happened to the single assessment process? It was trumpeted in 2002, when the national service framework for older people was launched. It was going to provide the way of ensuring that people were not put through endless, untimely assessment processes; only one process would be needed. That did not happen. Surely that process needs to be revisited if we are to have an assessment tool that really delivers.
	I have said already that I welcome the portability of care packages, which is mentioned in the Green Paper. I also welcome the recognition of the value of advice and information for all, and of how empowering that can be for individuals. There is, however, a question mark over whether there is enough recognition of the differing capacities of individuals and families to navigate their way through the system. That does not seem to have been reflected in any discussion about advocacy or about how we tailor support for families so that the system really delivers for everyone.
	I speak to constituents who have experienced direct payments, and the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) demonstrated graphically how we can learn from experience around the country in that regard. People have been turned into book-keepers and diary-keepers; they have effectively become the brokers of the system when they really wanted to be a carer. In some ways, direct payment takes that away from them and gives them something else which they have not signed up for. We need clarity about advocacy.
	It is also important to make it clear, when designing a new system fit for the 21st century, that human rights are a strong and resilient thread running through all of it. In a rights-based, entitlements-based system, the individual can ultimately force the joining up of services-through the courts if necessary-and ensure that they are wrapped around to fit them, rather than the other way round.
	I welcome what the Secretary of State said earlier about the need to root out ageism by 2012. That is long overdue, but very welcome. We should not have arbitrary age bars or differential charges for services. How can the charges for someone in a young adult care facility be massively higher than those for someone in a residential care home for the elderly? What is it that those elderly people are not entitled to that results in their care costs being so much lower than those for younger people?
	That brings me to carers, to whom I referred in an intervention. Carers should be part of the Green Paper and should be enshrined in the principles of the national care service. Just last week, I attended the annual review of the Sutton carers centre, which covers 19,000 carers in the London borough of Sutton. I heard some very inspirational presentations given by local carers there-and by Jill Pay, who I understand is on the Standing Commission on Carers. These are ordinary people doing exceptional things, and we all know that their own health and well-being often suffer as a result of taking on caring responsibilities. Reference has been made to the £53.10 carer's benefit. What we need is a timetable that delivers a significant enhancement to that benefit, well before the 2018 target set in the Government's carers strategy.
	We also need transparency and accountability regarding the £150 million that the Secretary of State has put into caring services through the NHS. When I raised the matter in a debate in June, the Minister told me that I should go and ask my primary care trust. I did just that. Three months and endless e-mails later, I received a letter yesterday. Let me read what it said at the end:
	NHS Sutton and Merton was expecting these resources to be allocated specifically, and not as part of general growth allocations. However, it only became clear in April 2009 that the funds were actually included in general growth which the PCT had already committed some 4 months earlier in the Strategic Plan.
	The money is not going where it was intended, irrespective of whether or not the Minister tells us it is. I hope that he will say more in his summing-up speech about how we will be able to track this in the future. I am not talking about ring-fencing; the Minister should not go down that path. I am not in interested in that; I am interested in local accountability for how the money is spent. At the moment, on the basis of the behaviour of my PCT and many others, that is not demonstrable.
	To conclude, I hope that the Green Paper will not only provide better care and support, but be a driver for law reform. We need a comprehensive new social care Act that brings together all the carers legislation passed piecemeal over the last decade. It should update the legislation, remove the last vestiges of the Poor Law that are still part of our system and deliver the safeguarding, security and decency of care that all our citizens deserve. With that, I look forward to seeing the White Paper, but rather than delivering anything, it might be a first shot in the general election. After that election, whoever sits on the Treasury Bench will have to build a real consensus, which is what all our constituents want.

Hywel Williams: I will endeavour to be fairly brief. The Green Paper is concerned with care in England. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, East (John Mason) speaks for Scotland, and I speak for Plaid Cymru and Wales. In the past, I have resisted intervening in debates on care in England, despite the strong temptation.
	Our main concern-and that of constituents in Wales and Scotland-is the particular worry about attendance allowance and disability living allowance. There has been some confusion over the last few months, some of which was cleared by the announcement on DLA for the under-65s. That still leaves the concern I expressed earlier about over-65s, particularly those in Wales and Scotland, given the devolved nature of care, social care and health services.
	I had a close look at the Green Paper. I see that everyone on the front page is smiling, and, rather alarmingly, so is the Prime Minister on page 2, but perhaps they are all smiling at the DLA announcements-so there we are.
	About 115,000 people in Wales have a right to attendance allowance, 80,000 of them at the higher rate. They, including 2,370 in my own Caernarfon constituency, value it as a targeted and dependable source of help. Since its inception, it has provided a way of promoting and enabling autonomy, just as the mobility allowance provided a way of addressing the needs of disabled people living out in the community. That was also the principle behind the groundbreaking moves in the '70s and '80s, particularly in Wales, to shut large institutions under the All Wales strategy for mental handicap, as it was called at the time-something I was intimately involved in as a young social worker.
	Attendance allowance helps people to be independent. There nothing wrong with being dependent. There is nothing dishonourable about it. However, the direction of social policy over the past 30 years has been towards autonomy, choice and enhanced independence for those who, in darker decades, might never have seen the outside of an institution. I therefore consider the current move to be a step in the wrong direction.
	Given that the provision of care in Scotland and Wales is the responsibility of the devolved Administrations, I hope that the Minister will explain what will happen in Scotland and Wales if attendance allowance is, as it were, taken in-house throughout the United Kingdom. Will the Scotland and Wales element be transferred to the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament as a block grant for them to administer? That would be something of a constitutional novelty. Will the Welsh Assembly, for example, be able to administer an attendance allowance for Wales on the basis of the old system, or will it just spend the money on health and social services in Wales in the normal manner?

Mark Harper: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Hywel Williams: I will, although I am loth to do so given the pressure of time.

Mark Harper: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He has reminded us of a comment made by the right hon. Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks) about joined up-government, not just in Westminster but throughout the United Kingdom. It is essential for conversations between the Westminster Government and the devolved Governments to take place at an early stage.

Hywel Williams: That is a very good point. I would certainly like the Welsh Assembly Government to take more responsibility for attendance allowance, although, as I have said, that would be a constitutional novelty.
	I think that we need some answers from the Government before we take this much further, because there is a real fear in Wales and Scotland that DLA and attendance allowance will disappear, and we are unclear about what will take their place.

Phil Hope: We have had an important-indeed, I would say crucial-debate on the Government's proposal to create a national care service for older and disabled people. Members have spoken with great passion and considerable knowledge. We have heard from former Ministers, and from Members with personal and constituency experiences. I shall take each of the contributions as a submission to the Green Paper consultation, which will boost the numbers.
	In opening the debate, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State spelled out the need for change. My right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks) and the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) rehearsed some of the core arguments about the change in demography. For me, a key fact is that there will be 1.7 million more people needing care in the future. Is the current system of care provision able to cater for that? The Government's conclusion, and one of the drivers behind the decision to change the system into a national care service, is that it is not, and that we need to find ways of responding to that.
	Another key issue is the anger that I have heard expressed up and down the country at the unfairness of the means test, which forces people to use their savings or sell their homes to pay for their own care. That was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson). People are also worried about the quality of care services. I think that every Member referred to that. People are worried not only about whether they will be cared for well, but about whether the standard of care will vary according to where they live. Many are worried about the postcode lottery. Adults with disabilities are particularly worried about a variation between care assessments in different parts of the country. They do not feel confident that their care needs would be met if they moved to another area.
	In proposing a national care service, we have used the building blocks of much of the very good work that has already been done throughout the country over the last four or five years. I must directly contradict claims by some Members on both sides of the House that we did nothing during those years and then suddenly embarked on consultation about a Green Paper. I remind them that it was back in 2007 that we launched Putting People First, which received huge support across the country. Local authorities, the health service, third sector organisations and the private sector signed up to the agenda for the transformation of care services. We set aside an additional £520 million for local authorities to personalise social care services in the way that every Member here wants. Most councils are now getting more than £1 million each to support the agenda during the period 2008-11. That is a major building block as we aspire to create a national care service.
	Many Members mentioned carers and the importance of recognising their contribution in caring for a loved one. The carers strategy, published in 2008, is a 10-year programme to help to ensure that carers get increased care and control and can have a life outside of caring, which is what they aspire to and what we aspire to on their behalf. I understand the criticisms, repeated today, about the money being delivered by the primary care trusts that have received extra cash, for example for respite care. I will be meeting the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, with senior NHS officials, to discuss how we might take this forward.
	I find it difficult to accept criticism from the Conservative party about that issue as it voted against the extra money going into the health service in the first place. It now criticises us for the fact that the health service may not be giving the money out as it would have hoped. I cannot accept that and I find its position to be a little hypocritical.
	Others have mentioned the importance of services for people with disabilities. I want to remind the House that another key building block that we put in place to create a national care service was Valuing People Now, our three-year strategy to transform the lives of those with learning disabilities and improve the quality of and their access to local public services. I was disappointed when the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) criticised the Green Paper for not addressing the needs of adults with learning disabilities, as the whole of the Green Paper is about adults with disabilities, including learning disabilities. Many of the features of the service that they will receive are captured in the Green Paper. We also have a specific strategy to drive forward in particular services for adults with learning disabilities.
	Many Members have mentioned dementia as being a key pressure at the moment and one that is likely to grow because of the demographic changes. My right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North made that point. We have our national dementia strategy, published in February. It talks about earlier diagnosis and earlier intervention, which is a key part of how we help people to live well with dementia as well as providing new services. I visited my right hon. Friend's constituency where there is a very good memory clinic-one of the forerunners of the national dementia strategy, it is a model of good practice that we would like to be replicated across the country.
	Mental health has been mentioned. We have just completed our consultation on New Horizons, a major shared vision for mental health for the future, whose twin aims are to improve mental health services generally but also, specifically, to improve the mental well-being of the population as a whole.
	We also have the national strategy on adults with autism. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) was gracious in recognising the contribution of the Government in creating a statutory basis for that in a Bill that I think will receive Royal Assent in a few days. I am certain that it will. It is a landmark for the care and support of adults with autism.
	We also have our Dignity in Care campaign. Not a single Member mentioned that, which is why I mention it now. It is another key building block in driving change forward from the bottom up. Ten thousand individuals have now identified themselves as dignity champions in residential care homes, domiciliary care, the NHS, local authorities, the third sector and private sector organisations. They are all committed to playing their part in taking forward what I regard as a social movement to put dignity at the heart of care.
	More recently, we published the social care workforce strategy. My hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt) was a model for how we might undertake consultations in our constituencies with individuals and groups on such proposals. From today, I would encourage every MP to spend the next two weeks-we still have another fortnight before the closing date-talking to local carers organisations and user groups, as well as third sector and private sector care providers and local authorities. We must ensure that everybody is fully engaged in this debate. Members should be leaders and shapers of the debate in their constituencies, because it is very important. The Prime Minister recently announced that from October 2010 people with the greatest needs will be offered free personal care in their own homes, which is a major step forward in creating an integrated national care service for the future. We are working through the detailed modelling of how that will work, but it is of central importance and a building block towards achieving a national care service.
	We must work through each and every one of these strategies and bring them together. Each of them is good in its own right but, because of the concerns that have been raised, we all know that in order to meet the needs of both carers and the users of care in our constituencies we have to reform and reshape the whole system, as well as put in place and improve the individual components. Many Members have highlighted the key features of the national care service, and I think the public should start to expect them as an entitlement. Those features include services that enable people to live longer in their own homes, and prevention-that has been a theme throughout the afternoon. This will give carers support, and also peace of mind that the person they are caring for-perhaps a family member-is being looked after, such as through telecare or telehealth. I disagree with the sweeping criticism made by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow); I think telecare and telehealth have an important role to play in helping people, alongside other measures.

Paul Burstow: rose-

Phil Hope: I understand why the hon. Gentleman wants to intervene, but I am sure he will understand that I do not have much time. Let me just say that I do not think we should dismiss these measures too readily.
	The idea of a national assessment of a person's care needs based on the aspirations they themselves have about their way of life and independence was raised. I want to reassure the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton that that is exactly what we want from a consistent and national system of care. It will of course be delivered locally, but to a pattern and a set approach that will allow people to have consistency of care in different parts of the country. It will not impose a system that negates individual needs and local distinctiveness; rather it will reinforce the needs of the individual and in a way that does not lead to different outcomes in different parts of the country. I hope that reassurance is sufficient.
	The disability movement in this country has been championing real portability, and wants that to be the outcome of the care needs assessment. I am delighted that the national care service will be a major achievement for the disability movement in this country.

Mark Harper: I agree about portability and the disability movement, but what is important to note is that this is not a national care service, but an England care service. We must not get more portability within England and then make the borders between Wales and Scotland real barriers to people who might want to move about our United Kingdom.

Phil Hope: I will make this point now, although I was going to come on to address the contribution of the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) as well as that which of the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) made from the Back Benches-it is confusing that he is now sitting on the Front Bench. Officials met colleagues from the devolved Administrations and territorial offices to discuss the content of the Green Paper before publication in July this year. Officials have been in regular contact since then with all devolved Administrations. We have been holding various meetings since the publication, and a further series of meetings is planned to ensure a co-ordinated approach and to take into account the very real and understandable concerns Members have raised.
	Members have asked about the extent to which social care and health care services can be joined up. My right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North made a particular point about that in relation to housing. This is not just warm words in a paper; it is practical action that we know can happen, whether through joint strategic needs assessments or joint commissioning processes. We also have some structural changes. There are eight care trusts, for example. Each of these models is being tried. Some are better than others. There is not a one-size-fits-all attitude. Indeed, we now have a range of integrated care pilots. I am unsure whether my right hon. Friend has come across them, but they were launched recently. The clue to what they are about is in the title; they offer integrated care. Issues being looked at in 16 localities include integrated care for people with dementia and the elderly, end-of-life care and care for people with long-term conditions, fluctuating conditions or mental health conditions. So we are taking practical steps to find out, through practice-through making it happen-how we can do this better.
	Providing more information and advice is another key feature of the approach; it could be said to be an entitlement that people should expect from a national care service. People and their families should know what care, support and choices are available and how they can properly access them. We need to be able to reach out into the community to those who might not be accessing services under the current system.

Paul Burstow: The Minister is discussing access to advice, but does he think that there also needs to be a similar entitlement to advocacy?

Phil Hope: Yes, this country has some excellent examples of support for advocacy, particularly among the user-led organisations; there are many varieties of this. We are funding the development of a range of user-led organisations up and down the country, and I have met such organisations. The one that I can remember most vividly is the Essex Coalition of Disabled People: not only are its people advocates, but they manage the direct payments system for many disabled people in Essex who use it-those disabled people find that things work very well. That coalition is run by disabled people for disabled people, and it provides a successful advocacy system too. Advocacy would need to be a part of any future national care service.
	The idea of personalised care and support is crucial. The word personalisation runs through the whole of the Green Paper. It is about giving people choice over the care that they receive; giving people control over their care and when and how they receive it; and genuinely enabling people to live the independent lives that they want to lead. This personalisation should apply not only to care provided in people's own homes, but to residential care. The point has been made, not least by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam, that we need to ensure that in residential care settings people are given personalised care. I can remember visiting one residential care home where two residents in their 80s had got married. They were living ordinary lives and doing things that other people do, such as having relationships. That is the right way forward.
	The key theme that every Member's contribution has touched on is fair funding. We know that all the options will have their advantages and disadvantages-in fact, we spell them out in the Green Paper to encourage the widest debate possible, as people understand how we could have funding that is sustainable for the longer term. A number of hon. Members, not all of whom are still in the Chamber, have reflected on the value of general taxation as a route for funding a national care service. May I emphasise that a lot of care is funded through general taxation right now? That is what is being delivered at the moment. We know that more resources are being put in from general taxation to fund the care system, of which the free personal care announced by the Prime Minister is the latest example.
	I have a key question to ask hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Blaydon and for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins), who commented on this: given the demographic change that will take place-there are four people of working age to every pensioner now, but that will become two in the future-would it be fair between the generations to place all the burden of paying for older people's care on people of working age? The system would have to be not only fair between the generations-I have met many people who feel it would not be-but sustainable. Can it actually work in practice, or would the level of the tax burden on the working age population be so high as to be unacceptable?

David Anderson: The Minister has obviously made the assumption that the only way to pay for this is out of income tax. However, people carry on paying tax long after they have retired; everybody pays VAT every day of the week. I made the point in my contribution that one possible approach would be to have a 0.5 per cent. rise in VAT, which would put £2.5 billion directly into the care budget.

Phil Hope: All I can say to my hon. Friend is that we are listening hard to what everybody has to say about the way forward. I have tried to explain why the models that we have proposed are sustainable in the longer term-over decades of an ageing society-but we welcome any thoughts that people have and any contributions that they wish to make.
	I wish to try to address some of the misconceptions that are inevitable when a debate of this kind is generated. First, I wish to say that this is a Green Paper for all adults; although the media may have portrayed it as a social care Green Paper that is just for older people, it is not-it is for adults with disabilities too. We are keen to ensure that we have a national care service that rightly provides the choice, control and independent lives that adults with disabilities rightly expect. I hope to hear more about that from their organisations in the future.
	Secondly-I think this is a fair criticism-it was said that in some ways we have not placed families and carers at the heart of a new system for care in the future. I can see the reasons for that criticism of the Green Paper, but I want to say today that we do see families and carers as being at the very heart of the system. The purpose of a care service has to be to provide the support, choice and services that individuals need and that they can access in order to their lives as individuals with somebody caring for them with their families and relatives. Some people, of course, do not have carers, families and relatives around them. The care service needs to meet their needs, too, but we need to ensure that, as the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) said, the care service gives support to carers and families, who are at the heart of what a care system should be about.
	On benefits and attendance allowance, which were mentioned by many hon. Members, let me make it clear that we are still keen to receive views on the case that was made by the King's Fund, Wanless and others to bring together some elements of disability benefits, such as attendance allowance, with the funding of care to provide a better, targeted system of care and support that will benefit everyone in need of care. I recognise some of the detailed points about the fact that attendance allowance and the DLA can be gateway benefits to other benefits, and that any change to the system will therefore need to take that into account. I am keen to get all of that right. I was pleased that the hon. Member for Forest of Dean described attendance allowance and DLA as being folded into a care system that gets reshaped and redistributed, rather than as being cut, which is how others have been portraying it. It quite clearly is not a cut.
	Whatever the outcome of the consultation, the principle will continue to be that people receiving any of the relevant benefits at the time of reform will receive an equivalent level of support and protection under a new and better care and support system. We are going to make changes to disability benefits only if we are certain that by doing so we can better support the care needs of older and disabled people.
	To pick up on the point about the cash that one gets as an attendance allowance, our intention is that the care and support that people will get in the future will be in the form of a personal budget that can be provided in cash for anybody who wants it that way. We want to see that feature driving forward as we develop our national care service. Although I am sure that that will not have assuaged all the concerns that have been raised today, I hope that those reassurances will help individual concerns.
	I will not take the time of the House by reflecting for too long on the Government's concerns about the views expressed by the Conservatives and its way forward. My view is that the Opposition simply do not get it. A few weeks ago, they announced their scheme for a voluntary payment of £8,000 to provide residential care for those who choose it. We now understand that that scheme will exclude people with any pre-existing health conditions, so the number of those who would enter the scheme-let alone the number who would voluntarily choose to do so-is so small that it becomes a scheme for very few people, which completely ignores the needs of the many. Indeed, nine out of 10 people are not cared for in residential care-they are cared for in their own homes. That is why we have gone down the route of the free personal care scheme as a major building block for a new national care service.
	Although I do not know the details, last week the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), who speaks for the Opposition on these matters, announced the creation of what appeared to be 153 new local quangos called public health boards, which would just be another layer of bureaucracy and complexity of funding, which already bedevil the system. I fail to see how a party that talks publicly about cutting bureaucracy and waste can immediately create a massive new wasteful bureaucracy, but that is for it to defend.
	In drawing this debate to a close, I am delighted to say that the careandsupport.direct.gov.uk website has had 90,000 hits. Will hon. Members please encourage all their constituents to take part-if Members have their own website, I ask them please to add a link to the site from theirs-and to get engaged in the debate? Let us learn from the inspirational example of my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley who held a debate in her constituency. Let us meet local organisations. The job is clear. I want to build an unstoppable momentum for reform that will represent the biggest step forward for social justice in decades and improve millions of lives. Let us together create a national care service of which we can all be proud.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House has considered the matter of the Social Care Green Paper.

REGIONAL SELECT COMMITTEE (WEST MIDLANDS)

Ordered,
	That Dr Richard Taylor be a member of the West Midlands Regional Select Committee.-( Mr. Blizzard .)

REGIONAL SELECT COMMITTEE (YORKSHIRE AND THE HUMBER)

Motion made, and Question proposed,
	That Mary Creagh be discharged from the Yorkshire and the Humber Regional Select Committee and Mr Austin Mitchell be added .-( Mr. Blizzard .)

John Randall: I should like to discuss motion 5 on the Order Paper. I rather missed the opportunity on motion 4, I am afraid: I was sitting back and when motion 3 was not moved, I thought that the same thing would happen to motion 4. I was going to ask a question of a Minister, but I cannot see the Leader of the House or the Deputy Leader of the House on the Government Front Bench. However, the Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household is there-it is like looking into a mirror-and I am sure that he will be very capable of answering some questions.
	As you may know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, my party and the Liberal Democrats are not terribly enthused, to say the least, by the Regional Select Committees. In fact, we have decided not to take part in them. However, on the question of motion 5, why at this stage-the Committees were set up only recently-do people need to be taken off them and then put back on? It is always interesting. Was the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) not happy with the set-up of the Committee; or, did he in some way displease the Whips? Perhaps he pleased them so much that they took him off the Committee.

Greg Mulholland: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if such a change of membership is put before the House, we should always have an explanation of why one Member is standing down and another is being put forward? Currently, these motions are put forward with no discussion and, given that the Committees are supposed to provide for more local accountability and interest, it is unacceptable not to know why one Member in the area is leaving and one is coming forward.

John Randall: I am not sure that I would want an explanation on every occasion, but, as this opportunity arises from time to time, it is useful just to test whether the Government can tell the House why a decision has been made. I do not labour the point, because, speaking as a furniture retailer, I am very interested in the Adjournment debate that is coming next. I shall be interested to note what the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) says when I read it later in  Hansard.

Paul Burstow: In the hon. Gentleman's earlier remarks, he suggested that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) was being removed from the Committee. In fact, it is the other way around, and I should hope that he would not want to malign the hon. Gentleman unfortunately.

John Randall: I should like to apologise to the House for that mistake. I in no way wanted to mislead Members. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby has obviously pleased the Whips. I know that he hopes for a career moving forward from the Back Benches, and, at this last moment, perhaps this is still an attempt to do so. I shall now sit down, so we might hear from the Government Front Bencher before we move to the next motion.

John Spellar: It was very interesting to see the double act between the official Opposition and their errand boys on the Liberal Democrat Bench. Increasingly, they see their role as that of principal understudy to the Conservative Opposition, and this debate is yet another example of that. Let us be quite clear what the debate is about: the Conservative Opposition do not like Regional Select Committees. They have been quite open about that, to be fair, but the House has decided. There is also a well-established procedure, which the hon. Gentleman has reflected-along with remarks about my appearance-for changing the membership of all Committees. Hon. Members are just trying to score political points, and not doing it very well.
	 Question put and agreed to.

REGIONAL SELECT COMMITTEE (SOUTH WEST)

Motion made, and Question proposed,
	That Linda Gilroy be discharged from the South West Regional Select Committee and Roger Berry be added. -(Mr. Blizzard.)

John Randall: I did not think that the Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household was going to give way on the previous motion, so I thought I would reserve my time here-
	 Debate adjourned (Standing Order No. 9(3)) .
	 Debated to be resumed Monday 2 November.

FURNITURE INDUSTRY

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. -(Mr. Blizzard.)

David Taylor: According to figures from the British Furniture Confederation, the UK furniture industry is currently worth nearly £10 billion at retail prices. It directly employs about 131,000 people in 7,500 enterprises and makes a significant, but often overlooked, contribution to the manufacturing economy. Indeed, furniture makers, large and small, represent 5 per cent. of the UK manufacturing base. In addition, the industry supports, and is supported by, a large supply chain of materials suppliers, designers, component manufacturers, distributors, contractors and retailers.
	Although there is no traditional geographical base for the furniture industry, there are clusters of companies in south Wales, Buckinghamshire and the east midlands, including Art Forma in my constituency and a number of furniture makers in Long Eaton, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Liz Blackman). This is consistent with the fact that our region remains the area with the highest proportionate number of manufacturing workers. The industry is divided between small companies and relatively large concerns. The BFC estimates that 67 per cent. of all furniture manufacturing companies employ fewer than nine people, but also that the largest 300 companies account for 45 per cent. of the total employment. Fifty-eight per cent. of output is for the domestic market, 13 per cent. for the office market, and 29 per cent. for the contract market, which includes Government.
	The purpose of my debate is to explore the industrial and consumer implications of the sales and promotion tactics far too frequently used by the large furniture companies in selling to the domestic market. It is all about the myth of the half-price, time-limited sale. Anyone who reads a Sunday newspaper or magazine will be familiar with the resounding slap on the kitchen floor of inserted sales and promotional fliers. Invariably, one of these will be from a large furniture company, offering huge reductions on sofas and other furniture as part of a sale that will end soon. Typically, the sales periods will be extended and 50 per cent. discounts, even double mark-downs, will be offered to the public for an even longer period still. One of my contentions is that, despite some caveat in tiny print undecipherable to the naked eye, the discounted products are virtually impossible to find retailing at the full price, so there is no way of knowing whether the undiscounted price represents a real saving for the potential consumer or whether it is just a cynical, deceitful come on.
	The current law regarding sales periods only requires the discounted price to have been available for a minimum of 28 days consecutively in the preceding six months. Yet advertising literature from DFS and other companies scrupulously avoids quoting the actual dates for these sales periods. Instead, they have cleverly adopted a policy of rolling sales, where the sales offers are switched between product lines. One difficulty that trading standards officials face in effectively tackling this sort of dishonest, manipulative practice is that the pricing practices guide issued to traders is not mandatory. Indeed, the introduction to the guidance, issued by the short-lived, now-departed, pre-Mandelsonia Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, is a master-class exercise in lowering regulatory expectations:
	This Guide recommends to traders a set of good practices in giving the consumer information about prices in various situations. It has of itself no mandatory force: traders are not under any legal obligation to follow the practices recommended.
	No doubt somewhere, in a remote retail outlet during the quietest period of the year, there will be gathering dust sofas and other furniture at enormous prices that will then be used as a base for sales elsewhere in the country.
	However, there is legislation designed to tackle misleading business in consumer marketing and sales practices. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008-CPRs-were implemented to bring the UK in line with the provisions of the European Union's unfair commercial practices directive. The CPRs prohibit 31 commercial practices and specifically cover misleading or aggressive promotions. These practices are those deemed to be unfair in all cases, regardless of whether it would have induced the average consumer to make a purchase. I believe that the CPRs have particular relevance to the sort of perma-sale tactic used by DFS and others. Schedule 1 to the CPRs, covering banned practices, contains the following prohibition:
	Falsely stating that a product will only be available for a very limited time, or that it will only be available on particular terms for a very limited time, in order to elicit an immediate decision and deprive consumers of sufficient opportunity or time to make an informed choice.
	To illustrate the type of practice referred to, the Office of Fair Trading's guidance on the CPRs cites the example of a trader who falsely tells a consumer that the price of homes will rise in seven days' time. That prohibition should apply to the specially extended sales practice used in adverts such as the one placed by DFS in  The Times on 4 September, which stated:
	Final days to save. There's only a few days left to enjoy half price savings on many great designs and final reductions ...there's so much choice and so little time.
	The consumer has no idea whether that is accurate but is clearly being pressurised into making a snap decision to purchase rather than an informed choice. Consumer Focus and others have pointed out that the CPRs do not offer direct redress to the consumer. Even if they have lost money, a consumer cannot take traders to court or get direct compensation under the CPRs.
	Trading standards offices locally and the OFT nationally are charged with making businesses comply with the regulations, and only they can bring action against traders. Yet to date, the CPRs have been used to prosecute only once. In a country of 60 million people, that is astonishing. It seems pretty clear that the Government need to put the pricing practices guide on a statutory footing, or at least knit together more effectively the PPG and the CPRs. At present, they are cumbersome and difficult for trading standards to apply successfully to the widespread use of the dubious practices that I have mentioned. Trading standards departments may also need more resources to tackle such practices, but I surmise that in the current economic climate that is not likely to happen any time soon.
	That aside, I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend the Minister that I take encouragement from the proposals contained in July's White Paper A Better Deal for Consumers, which offers a longer-term prospect of action to modernise this aspect of consumer law. Encouragingly, it commits to a number of actions, such as modernising trading standards powers and
	a new Consumer Rights Bill which will implement the proposed EU Consumer Rights Directive and modernise and simplify UK consumer sales law.
	That is from page 9 of the White Paper, Cm 7669. We await the content of the Queen's Speech next month with considerable interest.
	Keen calendar watchers will note that we are heading towards Christmas, when the sales and marketing efforts of most industries go into overdrive. The big furniture companies are no exception, and the latest flurry of fliers is accompanied by increased broadcast and internet activity. There are just eight weeks to Christmas eve, and a visitor to the DFS website sees the prominent words Half Price and Christmas on the home page. Again, we see the familiar pattern of a high price discounted, often by 50 per cent. There is no way that consumers can check the accuracy of the amount they are being offered as a discount. So far, so bad.
	The internet clearly offers exciting opportunities for retailers and consumers, but we must have the regulatory framework in place to protect and promote consumers' rights in the virtual marketplace. As I have said, I am encouraged by the content of the White Paper. Its focus on the increasing commercial importance of the internet will be much needed, and I am sure that it will offer yet another important incentive to vote Labour at the general election in the spring.
	To return to more traditional media, I was interested to note that the Advertising Standards Authority, hardly the most tenacious of regulatory bodies, has twice upheld complaints from the public in the last year about half-price claims made in DFS's TV adverts, ruling that they were misleading. Although neither advert was banned by the ASA for using unverifiable price reductions, they point to advertising practices that sail close to the wind, to put it kindly.
	DFS has a dubious record in its advertising content, particularly on television. Members might remember its advertising campaign from 2005, which featured tatty old sofas dumped in canals. It rightly drew criticisms of environmental irresponsibility, although the ASA chose not to uphold any of the 70 complaints that it attracted from the public. One is tempted to ask why the ASA exists.
	I am struck by the small print on one of the DFS fliers circulated with last weekend's newspapers, which stated:
	DFS may alter or extend promotions at any time.
	That is the proverbial two fingers to consumer rights.
	In addition, DFS and other larger furniture companies make considerable and somewhat emotional and sentimental play of their products being made in the UK. For example:
	DFS don't just sell sofas, they actually make them in their own factories in Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
	That was in  The Sunday Times on 30 August. No doubt some of those products are made in the UK but, as a constituent of mine points out, it is common knowledge in the trade that a significant proportion of DFS's product range is imported from China. That is another example of misleading information being used to cloud consumers' judgment.
	Given that it is highly unlikely that the Government will reintroduce retail price maintenance, perhaps we should consider alternative measures to tackle the lack of coherent regulation of commercial sales periods in particular. There are useful examples of straightforward, pro-consumer regulation of sales periods elsewhere in Europe. For example, in France retailers of furniture-or anything else-can offer reduced price sales only at certain times of the year, with the Government fixing those dates and notifying the public of them. In Belgium, there are two annual sales periods, preceded by black-out periods when price reductions cannot be announced or suggested by retailers.
	I should make it clear, if I have not already done so, that it is not my intention to denigrate one particular company-though it is a large and obvious company-or all the bigger UK furniture companies. I simply wish to point out the unfairness of those misleading sales and promotional practices. They are unfair to both the consumer and the smaller furniture manufacturers in the UK, who can lose out when people decide to buy a piece of furniture on the basis of misleading information. I need not stress that advertising standards and consequent consumer decisions become ever more important during periods of economic recession.
	The UK is the fourth largest consumer of furniture in a global market with an estimated value of $240 billion. So furniture is a big and growing sector with great significance in domestic economies. Consumption is growing in real terms in all major markets and is expected to continue to grow in future. That is primarily due to improvements in standards of living in emerging economies such as China and India, and an increase in disposable income in many other western countries, particularly accession countries to the EU. The markets exhibiting the highest growth rates are the new EU members and much of Asia, including China.
	At this point, it is important to mention the environmental impact of the furniture industry. The trend of increased imports to the UK from the European economic area and beyond confirms the high carbon cost of an embattled and under-invested domestic furniture industry-and, of course, manufacturing in general. There is no doubt that the UK furniture industry faces tough competition for a proportion of the growing international market. For example, it is estimated that a Chinese factory producing like-for-like products has a 20 to 25 per cent. cost advantage over its UK counterpart at factory gate prices. Competition is also coming from within the EU, with the Polish furniture industry in particular enjoying high levels of investment and growth in recent years. Fundamentally, this debate is an argument not for protectionism but for the larger manufacturers and retailers to be more truthful and honest with domestic consumers. Those are supposed to be two of the four prime guidelines for the Advertising Standards Authority-legal, decent, truthful and honest. Truth and honesty are too frequently absent from furniture advertising.
	Unfortunately, smaller furniture companies are finding it increasingly difficult to compete domestically or enter the export market. Yet they have the skills and expertise to adapt constantly to a rapidly changing market, which responds to contemporary trends in fashion, art and culture. That difficulty could be alleviated somewhat if Government support to furniture manufacturing were increased, particularly assistance in entering the export market. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about that.
	The regional development agencies also have a role to play, as none at present, apart from Advantage West Midlands, classify furniture as a priority manufacturing sector. I hope that my RDA in the east midlands will again consider reclassifying that manufacturing sector as a priority.
	Essentially, we must seek to improve the quality of sales and promotion practices used by the big furniture companies. It is not just DFS, but I have used it as an example. Related criticism can be made of several other aspects of retail, but there is no time in such a debate to draw attention to them.
	In summary, consumers deserve straightforward and reliable information on the products they buy and we should use the existing regulations to ensure that they get it. If they are unenforceable in the face of artful advertising agencies, let us tighten them. Consumers deserve a better deal than they receive. Standards must be higher.
	I am particular pleased to note that my hon. Friend the Minister is replying to this debate. He represents a south Wales seat and will be aware of how important and sizeable the furniture industry in his region is, and of the contribution that it makes to the local economy. He will also be aware, given that he is one of the most astute of the newly appointed Ministers, of the dubious practices that go on. It is a most unfortunate situation. We can do something about it, and I have every confidence that he will do so.

Kevin Brennan: I begin in the usual way by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) on securing this debate, which is on a very interesting and important topic, and on elucidating the subject in the House with his usual eloquence. He was as ever well supported by examples from the real world. I thank him very much for his kind words at the end of his remarks, and for the welcome he gave the consumer White Paper that the Government published earlier in the year.
	When to hold a sale or a sales promotion is a commercial decision for a business. For that reason, in general, the Government do not believe that it would be in consumers' interests to follow some of the practices of our European partners which my hon. Friend outlined and to restrict sales periods to certain times of the year. I am sure that many consumers benefit from, and look forward to, the weekend sales that many retailers hold in the run-up to Christmas.
	However, the law requires sales to be conducted honestly and fairly. We all love a bargain, but sales should not unfairly mislead consumers into believing that they are getting one when they are not. As my hon. Friend says, that is especially important given that the economic downturn is putting greater pressure on household budgets. I share his concerns about whether that type of fair trading is the reality in certain sectors-he highlighted the furniture sector. We know that many consumers have the impression that some sales last all year round, which makes it difficult for them to know whether the reductions claimed are genuine. Indeed, it is questionable whether any consumers would pay the higher prices against which the reductions are claimed.
	The main legislation intended to protect consumers from underhand marketing and sales tactics is the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, which came into force in May of that year. The regulations ban traders in all sectors from engaging in unfair commercial practices with consumers, and cover acts or omissions by a trader directly connected to the promotion, sale or supply of products to or from consumers.
	The consumer protection regulations are principles-based and operate flexibly to catch unfair practices. At their heart is a general ban on the use of unfair commercial practices. That is supplemented with more detailed rules on practices that mislead by action or omission, and on aggressive selling techniques. They also contain a schedule of 31 specific practices that are banned outright.
	Misleading consumers about the price of a product, or of the existence of a specific price advantage, is one type of unfair commercial practice that is banned by the CPRs; another is misleading consumers about the geographical or commercial origin of a product. The blacklisted practice to which my hon. Friend referred may also apply when a promotion falsely claims that the offer will end very shortly, so as to elicit an immediate decision by consumers to make a purchase.
	The regulations apply to all businesses, irrespective of whether they sell on the internet or the high street. A breach is generally a criminal offence. Enforcers can also apply to the courts for enforcement orders, equivalent to injunctions, to stop the use of unfair commercial practices. As my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, the OFT and local authority trading standards services have a duty to enforce the CPRs. In addition, my Department issued a pricing practices guide for traders at the same time that the regulations came into force-

David Taylor: The Minister raises the interesting point that local trading standards have that duty, although it is debatable whether they have the resources to carry it out. However, in an internet era, it is difficult to know which trading standards authority should examine the trading practices that are causing concern.

Kevin Brennan: The Government recognise that and, as my hon. Friend said in his speech, the consumer White Paper talks about some of the challenges of consumer protection in the internet age, and some of the measures that we are planning to put into force to tackle some of the problems that arise when selling over the internet. In addition, the White Paper envisages a future consumer rights Bill and the post of consumer advocate, empowered to take up cases on behalf of consumers in a new way, especially in cases involving a general interest.
	As I was saying, the pricing practices guide recommends to traders a set of good practices in giving consumers information about prices in various situations. The CPRs implement the EU unfair commercial practices directive, which sets out rules on business-to-consumer commercial practices that all member states must apply. As a full harmonisation measure, it does not allow member states to apply stricter provisions in the area in which the directive applies. It would not therefore be possible to make the pricing practices guide mandatory, much as my hon. Friend might like that.
	However, the new pricing practices guide significantly tightens the guidance compared with the code of practice on price indications, which it replaced. This new guidance is especially pertinent to the length of time businesses should advertise a price reduction. The old code of practice included recommended practice where a trader compares a current price with a previous one. The recommended practice was that the price used as the basis for comparison should have been the most recent price at which the product was available for at least 28 consecutive days in the previous six months. That enabled some traders to argue that they were adhering to the letter, if not the spirit, of the code by having a high price for one month and then reducing the price for the following five months. Because the code had evidential effect in court, this made trading standards reluctant to challenge that practice.
	We are also aware that some furniture retailers would offer a small proportion of their stock at a higher price for one month. That enabled them to have rolling sales, in which the sales offers were switched between product lines. The new pricing practices guide says that the period of time for which the lower price will be available should not be so long that the comparison becomes misleading. It recommends that generally the period of time for which the lower price will be available should not be more than that for which the higher price was available. I take my hon. Friend's point about the lack of action so far, but we hope that this change will encourage enforcers to tackle claimed price reductions that have gone on for so long that they have become misleading.
	In addition, the higher price should be a genuine price at which the trader could reasonably expect to sell significant quantities of the goods. In determining whether it was reasonable to expect that goods could be sold at the higher price in significant numbers, all the relevant circumstances would need to be taken into consideration. It could be argued that a store was trading unfairly if the previous higher price was not comparable to competitors' prices at the time or if relatively few goods were sold at that price.
	In summary, the CPRs ban any commercial practice that misleads consumers about the price of goods and services or the existence of a specific price advantage. I hope that that reassures my hon. Friend that enforcers already have the powers to tackle misleading sale offers by furniture retailers, although I take his point, which he made forcefully and eloquently, that so far there have been few actions of that kind. I take this opportunity to say that the powers are in place, and I encourage enforcers, when they find that such practices are being carried out, to use those powers in the manner intended by the Government and Parliament.
	I referred earlier to the consumer White Paper, which my hon. Friend mentioned. A future consumer rights Bill could help to strengthen further consumer protection regarding such practices. In particular, the consumer advocate envisaged in the White Paper will be empowered to take up cases on behalf of consumers.

David Taylor: I am encouraged by what the Minister is saying, but does he acknowledge that, of all the areas of retailing for which legislation is in place to eliminate poor marketing practice, furniture is one of the most obvious and common areas where consumers potentially are not getting the information that they deserve and require to come to a sensible purchasing decision? Should he not focus on furniture before he turns to any other area of retailing activity?

Kevin Brennan: Yes, I acknowledge that. I also acknowledged at the beginning of my remarks that there was a particular issue with promotions from the furniture manufacturing industry. My hon. Friend mentioned the industry in this country, and in particular at the end of his remarks he rightly noted that I am aware of the furniture manufacturing industry in south Wales. I recognise that imports from low-cost countries can represent a significant challenge to all parts of UK manufacturing, particularly the furniture manufacturing industry.
	The Government are taking action through the manufacturing strategy to help companies to compete on value rather than low wages. That strategy was launched in September 2008 and brings together £150 million of support for the medium term to help businesses to access increased skills and technology support. The annual output from the UK furniture manufacturing industry is worth nearly £10 billion, and the industry employs directly about 124,000 people within 7,500 enterprises and supports a large supply chain comprising of materials, suppliers, component manufacturers, designers, distributors, contractors and retailers.
	Many of those are small businesses, as my hon. Friend is right to point out. About 67 per cent. of all furniture manufacturing concerns employ fewer than nine people. Also, however, the largest 300 companies account for 45 per cent. of total employment. I acknowledge the importance of the industry. The Real Help Now scheme for business is also available to companies from the furniture sector, and the furniture manufacturing sector can access the manufacturing advisory service and UKFirst-the furniture industry forum-which can offer best practice advice to furniture manufacturers to help to improve their competitive position.
	I once more congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on raising a very important issue. I have tried to confirm that the powers are in place to deal with that issue.

David Taylor: Would the Minister be willing to meet in his office me and one or two representatives at the smaller end of furniture manufacturing and retailing to explore in a little more detail some of the issues that I introduced briefly in this debate?

Kevin Brennan: I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend together with representatives from the industry to discuss the points discussed principally concerning consumer issues-in my case-although he might have to meet one of our hon. Friends if he wants to discuss manufacturing issues. However, I am sure that one of my ministerial colleagues would be prepared to meet him as well, if that was the tone of the meeting.
	To conclude, the powers are in place and the enforcers can use them. Any retailers engaging in such practices should look carefully at their practices and ensure that they are-
	 House adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 9(7)).